CNN Casualties, ‘Rings’ Predictions, China War Games

Welcome back to The Daily Courant, presenting the latest news at Puck.

First up today, Dylan Byers profiles the latest casualty of Chris Licht’s hard pivot: Brian Stelter, the Reliable Sources host, O.G. newsletter-er, and consummate mediaworld obsessive, is out at CNN.

Plus, below the fold: Tara Palmeri and Peter Hamby discuss MSNBC’s Liz Cheney fantasies—’24, ’28, resistance warrior, or future lefty ticket placeholder—and why they are all bananas. Bill Cohan investigates how a Xi-Putin alliance could stoke a Lehmanesque panic. Julia Alexander predicts the next ax to fall at Warners. And Matt Belloni watches Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings spinoff so you don’t have to.

Stelter’s departure is both totally unsurprising and yet completely and utterly stunning. Eleven years ago, he emerged onto the scene as David Carr’s younger sidekick in Page One, the documentary about The New York Times’ critical struggles during the financial crisis. At the time, he was a lowly junior media reporter whom the Times, long blinded by the transformations in its own industry, had hired to cover news at a more new-media pace. And unlike most Timesmen, who hail from Harvard or Yale and traditionally climbed the greasy pole of journalism through its exalted regional players, Brian had gone to Towson University and started his own obsessive blog about the TV news industry, TVNewser...