Vice’s Death Rattle, Marley Marketing Miracle, Witherspoon’s Banker Cavalry

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, your afternoon crib sheet to Puck’s latest reporting.

First up today, Dylan Byers shrewdly dissects how a microscandal at CBS News—surrounding a laid-off reporter, the alleged seizure of documents, and a myopic D.C. op-ed—has metastasized into full-blown media melodrama.

Plus, below the fold: Bill Cohan translates Bill Ackman’s latest public soliloquy and legal warning shot against Axel Springer. Scott Mendelson reveals how Bob Marley: One Love established a new paradigm for non-franchise movie marketing. Matthew Belloni scoops the anxieties surrounding Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine. And on a special aughts-era episode of The Powers That Be, Jon Kelly and Peter Hamby make sense of Vice’s latest winnowing milestone and BuzzFeed’s recent deal descent.

DYLAN BYERS

News and notes on a roiling and utterly predictable TV news microscandal.

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WILLIAM D. COHAN

A talmudic reading of the hedge fund manager’s latest three-hour soliloquy, Business Insider counteroffensive, and the general and growing oeuvre of his discontents.

SCOTT MENDELSON

Is the Paramount musical biopic a new paradigm for how studios can get people into theaters for non-tentpoles during the off-season?

MATTHEW BELLONI

Production company rollup Candle Media has hired the investment bank Moelis & Co. to figure out how to prop up Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine.