Baquet's Heir, Zuckerberg vs. Apple, and the Great Movie Death March

Happy Friday, and welcome back to The Daily Courant, our afternoon digest highlighting all of the most important reportage on offer across Puck.

Today, Dylan Byers updates the betting lines for the forthcoming succession horserace inside the New York Times newsroom, where executive editor Dean Baquet is nearing the end of his half-decade reign. Dylan also takes a closer look at the drama enveloping Politico after its blitzkrieg takeover by the German media conglomerate Axel Springer—and the rumor of an attempted rollup with rival outfit Axios.

Plus, below the fold, Alex Kantrowitz has the exclusive on an internal Facebook strategy document, previewing the company's plans to "knife" Apple. And don't forget to download the latest episode of our new podcast, The Powers That Be, featuring Peter Hamby and Matt Belloni discussing what the success of Halloween Kills portends for the future of the box office.

The Times Succession Sweepstakes Is Probably Settled

The inside scoop on the three media stories that everyone is talking about this Friday: The New York Times’ forthcoming succession horse race, Axel’s consummation of Politico, and a little more juice about Facebook’s new identity.

Last month, Dean Baquet turned 65, the age when the executive editor of The New York Times traditionally relinquishes his title. Given the challenges of Covid, Baquet graciously opted to extend his stay, but handicapping his successor has returned to the fore as one of media’s favorite parlour games. 

And in many ways, it’s an overdue one. Baquet, after all, seized the top job via some shrewd political engineering that led to the largely bloodless coup, in 2014, in which he ascended from managing editor to executive editor and Jill Abramson exited with what is believed to be a generous severance. There were some recriminations, a few weird New York Post covers, including one with Abramson in boxing gloves, and the threat of a tell-all book that morphed into a different project. But in the end, it didn’t amount to much. Baquet went on a listening tour throughout the building, and then went back to work.

During the intervening years, Baquet has had an enormously successful tenure at the Times, perhaps the most storied since Joe Lelyveld—he’ll be able to hang his hat on the Weinstein investigation, The Daily, the paper’s remarkable Trump coverage (including its historic tax series), its odyssey from Carlos Slim’s predatory loan to a $9 billion market cap behemoth, and the expansion of the brand’s enormously successful lifestyle division. Under-appreciated is that he did it all while keeping his ambitious potential successors at bay. In some way, that might have been the most difficult trick to pull off, especially at a place like the Times, which is notorious for its infighting.

Regardless, Baquet will step down no later than next summer, and Times insiders are now anxiously awaiting publisher A.G. Sulzberger’s selection of a new editorial leader the way Catholics await Vatican smoke signals. The politicking has started. 

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT