Twitter Fragility, ESPN After Disney, SPACs in Memoriam

Welcome back to the Daily Courant, your afternoon guide to what’s new at Puck.

First up, Dylan Byers offers the complete inside story of the Washington Post’s ongoing Twitter scandal—a social media micro-drama that has blossomed into a full-blown newsroom soap opera.

Then, below the fold: William D. Cohan checks in on some of his favorite SPACs after the great SPAC wipeout of 2022. Tara Palmeri joins Peter Hamby to explain the horrors of the January 6th proceedings. And Matt Belloni investigates what the NBA Finals’ unexpectedly low ratings portend for the future of ESPN at Disney.

Meanwhile, like many newsrooms, the Post was also dealing with a particularly novel digital age phenomenon—the trend of increasingly fractious, and sometimes influential, reporters airing their grievances on social media, which could occasionally complexify the overlap between the Post’s institutional brand and their own personal reputations and voice. It was a trend that visibly troubled Baron, as well as Fred Ryan, the organization’s publisher and C.E.O. The new executive editor would have to face the dual challenges of keeping the paper competitive with the Times and CNN while also managing the frustrations of its most outspoken staff, many of whom had loyal and ardent individual followings, particularly on Twitter.

During the interviews, Bezos listened intently while Ryan grilled the finalists—the AP’s Sally Buzbee, CNN’s Meredith Artley, and Post editors Steven Ginsberg and Cameron Barr—to ascertain how they might lead the paper, maintain its storied reputation, and continue to grow its business, sources with knowledge of the interviews told me. One of Ryan’s primary lines of inquiry focused on how each candidate intended to manage the staff’s use of social media and prevent employees from using Twitter in ways that could damage the company’s credibility. Ryan described such behavior as undermining the newsroom in a manner that not only hurt the brand but also diminished morale. “He wanted to know: how do we rein this in?” one person familiar with the interviews told me...