Monday, February 26, 2024 |
Share prices in Warner Bros. Discovery hover around record lows, Vice Media officially pink slips its employees, media reporting vets launch new trade publication, The NYT blasts a pro-Israel media watchdog for dishonest commentary, Donald Trump pays the Gray Lady's legal bills, the Supreme Court hears a major social media case, Google News ends its news tab experiment, Alec Baldwin gets a "Rust" trial date, and so much more. But first, the A1. |
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CNN Photo Illustration/Simon & Schuster |
Kara Swisher is not shying away from her trademark tell-it-as-it-is MO.
As existential questions confront both the tech and media industries, the self-described raconteur is out Tuesday with a candid assessment of the moguls and companies making the decisions that shape the world. In her memoir, aptly titled "Burn Book," Swisher takes no prisoners, offering readers a behind the curtain peek at the industry's most powerful and ego-obsessed titans that she has reported on, and tussled with, over her decades-long career.
We spoke to Swisher on Monday to get her insight on some of the challenges facing the media and tech landscape today. Below is a Q&A, which has been edited for clarity and due to space constraints. |
We are only two months into 2024, and it's been an awful year for digital media. The Messenger shut down, BuzzFeed announced plans to slash another 16% of staff as it continues to try to find footing in a shifting landscape, and Vice laid off hundreds as it effectively converts to a small studio. What do you make of it all? This was a long time coming. Let's be clear: A lot of what's happened is the fault of the media ... it's a fault of the media letting technology take the business — like really impact the business in ways they did not anticipate. By not continuing to iterate and change cost structures, they've got themselves in a situation that was already headed that way from back when Craigslist collapsed the classified advertising business. Right? This isn't fresh news that everything is going digital. It's how do you make a business out of it in a new environment? And they didn't anticipate that these tech companies were going to get into media. They were going to become media. And they are media. They are entertainment. What is Instagram except entertainment? For them to just think they were huge techies as a big error. You quote Steve Jobs in your book telling Rupert Murdoch, "The media industry is kind of screwed since the best technologists are working for people like me and not you." Do you believe that this is still a problem handicapping media? If so, why haven't legacy media companies been able to lure in top tech talent to improve their products? Stock options. Nice and elevated stock, elevated prices that are not in line with the actual. Media companies do not get to live by the same anti-gravity rules that tech companies have been able to. And then they grew into their valuations, which made it worse. But media companies didn't offer the same kind of upside. And so when you have upside of financial gain, you're going to attract the best talent. It's basic capitalism, right? How much do you blame Big Tech for the disastrous state of media? First they cornered the advertising market, which news organizations had relied upon. Now they're turning off the referral traffic hose. Oh, and their A.I. tech presents a big threat. Is it fair to see them as the villains in this story? Or is it the fault of news organizations for failing to adapt their business models quickly enough to the changing landscape? Look, in every change in history, there is someone who had the legacy business and didn't pay attention. And then there is someone who came in and ran rampant using different advantages over the landscape — and that's what these people did. The mistake was to think they didn't want your business, that they just wanted to help. Remember the "Twilight Zone" episode "To Serve Man"? It's a cookbook! I kept saying, "It's a cookbook, that they want to eat you!" And they'd be like, "No, they're here to help us." And I'm like, "They are not here to help you. They're here to eat you." It was so obvious to me. The New York Times, and other legacy media organizations, have faced fairly intense criticism lately for how they are covering the 2024 race, particularly Donald Trump's candidacy. Is the criticism valid? I think some of it is. I think they're the biggest dog in the media show right now — not a very big dog, by the way, but still dominant in news — and so people are going to criticize. And so everything is gonna be highly scrutinized. I do think they overprogrammed on [President Joe Biden's] age. I think they don't cover [Donald Trump's] lunacy the same amount, largely because he says something crazy every five minutes. So you become used to it. When some angry old man is shaking his fist at the internet, you ignore them. It's not that Biden's age thing isn't valid, it certainly is. It's just that there were a lot of stories. You've covered some of the most powerful people in the world for years and years, which you go through chapter by chapter in your book. What mistakes do you see news organizations making when they report on billionaires like Elon Musk and Bill Ackman? Who is doing a good job? I'm not sure why precisely we are listening to a hedge fund billionaires talk about diversity. I'm sorry. What's the reason? Because he gave money to Harvard? I mean, it's a news story that he attacks them. But otherwise, he's just a rich guy mouthing off. The other day, Elon was talking about caesareans. I was like, why are we listening to him? Only because they're rich are they're allowed to say nonsensical things. If I started going on about hedge fund investing, you should laugh at me. You write in your book, "Life is a series of next things, and you'd do well to be ready for that." A.I. is the most frightening rapidly developing technology on the horizon. How much of a threat do you believe emerging A.I. products actually pose to the media industry? Tyler Perry has already come out and said he is halting his planned $800 million expansion after seeing what OpenAI's Sora can do, expressing concern a lot of jobs are about to be lost. I think everyone's got a right to be nervous. And Tyler Perry is correct. I don't know if this — prime time is not here yet, Tyler Perry. You know what I mean? This stuff is expensive. It will be a long time before they can really — it's early into the game for this particular technology. Eventually, it will be inexpensive. Right now, it's quite expensive. But he's right to anticipate it. He's right to worry. I just think he's a little early. Over the weekend, Adrian Chen published a harsh review of "Burn Book" for The New York Times that has made waves in the industry. What's your response? Oh, where can I begin? I think one of the things that drove me crazy is the idea I wasn't tough enough. ... Go back and talk to anyone. And once I got out of beat reporting — where you cannot be critical in the same way that he would have liked me to have been — I did. AllThingsD was quite critical. We wrote about Uber. We wrote about Google in 2003, about their monopoly. And you can go back and find these things. I wish he had. Oddly enough, PR people from these companies are like, "I don't know who you're talking about, but she drove us crazy." Secondly, the thing that I got my sources through my ex-wife is just factually inaccurate. I didn't. I was a prominent tech reporter before I met her, so I don't know how that worked. Did she telepathically send me sources before we met? And the other part is saying they liked me because I was an entrepreneur like them. I was at major newspapers for 10 years, until 2003. So I was doing it 10 years. So how did that happen? Why did they like me before? It was just irresponsible to suggest that. I'm sorry. It was just full of inaccurate — I don't care if they don't like my book. But I'd like them to tell me about whether they like the actual book and not the book they wanted me to write or fill [their review] with inaccuracies about my career. It's just not true. What hope do you have for the media industry moving forward? Is there hope? Being entrepreneurial is critical to being in the media. We've got to reinvent ourselves with the right cost structures and the right size. You can have enormous influence. I haven't worked for a big media company in years. I have lots of influence. So there are all these opportunities to break free and do all these creative and interesting and impactful things. It's just going to be at a different cost structure and with a different employee base. And that's going to be smaller. I don't know how to say it in a nice way, but it's going to be smaller. |
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CNN Photo Illustration/Chris Pizzello/AP |
Warner's Woes: Share prices in Warner Bros. Discovery have plunged to near all-time lows, ending the day Monday trading at $8.55. The sell-off came after a less-than-ideal (to put it gently) earnings report Friday in which the HBO-HGTV-CNN-Warner Bros. parent missed on revenue and profit. Yes, there's plenty of free cash flow ($6.2 billion, to be precise), as David Zaslav boasted to investors. But the Q4 earnings report included financials that indicate the company's linear television business, which makes up the bulk of its profits, is contracting at a faster clip than its streaming business has made up for. And given the trend lines for the entire linear television business, including Paramount being placed on credit watch by S&P, it obviously has Wall Street concerned. 🔍 Zooming in: Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw, who noted that share prices have fallen 65% since the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger, assessed the situation like so: "The company's TV networks, which account for more than half of its sales, shrank by 8% last year. That would be fine if the company were growing elsewhere, like in streaming. But its direct to consumer business grew just 5%; the company lost almost 3 million subscribers in the US. WBD has convinced some outlets to report its streaming business is profitable. Its direct to consumer business is profitable, but that includes all the HBO subscribers via cable. HBO used to make more than $2 billion in profit a year. The direct to consumer business didn't clear $200 million." |
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CNN Photo Illustration/Mario Tama/Getty Images |
Excised From Vice: Judgment Day arrived for employees of Vice Media. After the company announced it would lay off hundreds of staffers as it pivots to a studio-like business, employees were officially pink slipped on Monday. The notices came via email, according to staffers. Tess Owen posted on X that she was laid off after nine years at the outlet via an email she received while at the dentist's office. Oof. David Shane, the crisis comms PR guru that private equity owner Fortress Investment Group has brought in to steer messaging in the interim, declined to comment when I asked if the company could share details on what type of severance employees are getting. Shane, however, did take the time to critique our reporting from last week. Priorities! |
Two Years of War: To mark the two years since Russia invaded Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky sat down with CNN's Kaitlan Collins for a wide-ranging interview from Kyiv. The newsy interview aired Monday night. But how do Western journalists travel to Kyiv amid the raging war? Collins noted to me it was "no simple task" and outlined the multi-step journey to the Ukrainian capital, which first began with an eight-hour flight to Munich. "From there, you board a plane to Krakow. But that's where the air travel stops, given Ukraine closed its airspace when Russia invaded in February 2022," Collins told me. "From Poland, it's a three-hour drive to the border that Poland shares with Ukraine, which was a focal point at the beginning of the war when so many Ukrainians fled the country for their safety. Today, the checkpoint looks relatively normal. We pass through after an hour's wait, which is relatively quickly, and continue onto Lviv. From Lviv, you board a train for a seven-hour train ride into Kyiv, a bustling city where it's hard to imagine that, just two years ago, many believed would be overrun by the Russian army. Instead, President Zelensky has gathered his top officials to talk about what's next, and sit for an interview CNN." |
Launching LateNighter: Hollywood has a new trade on the scene. Media reporting veterans A.J. Katz, Bill Carter, and Jed Rosenzweig on Monday launched LateNighter, a publication entirely devoted to covering the world of late-night television. "Late night remains a reliable source of original entertainment, and if subscription numbers — and viewing of nightly monologues — are to be believed, a lot of people remain interested," Carter told me. "Especially, in an election year, I think we'll have a lot of relevant stories emerging. You can already see that from the surge in interest in Jon Stewart's return. The shows still kick up real news. President Joe Biden going on with Seth Meyers. Jimmy Kimmel getting Donald Trump to openly root for him to quit. John Oliver roiling the right with a faux attempt to bribe Clarence Thomas to quit the Supreme Court. And I expect much more to come." Check out the site here. |
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- 🤫 Axel Springer and Business Insider have been silent since Bill Ackman delivered a nearly 80-page retraction demand to them last week. Representatives for both orgs have not responded to our requests for comment.
- CBS News returned the files belonging to Catherine Herridge, Alexandra Steigrad reported. (New York Post)
- CNN rolled out its new morning schedule, which brings "Newsroom" back to the 10am and 11am hours. NewscastStudio has highlights from the start of each hour. (NewscastStudio)
- While interviewing Kara Swisher onstage at 92Y, Don Lemon announced that his new X show will launch on March 11.
- Scott Nover looked into why some news publishers nuke their websites when they shutter. (Slate)
- Carlos Greer reports scammers are "selling fake copies of Savannah Guthrie's book after it topped the charts and sold out." (Page Six)
- On the topic of Guthrie's book, I'm told that by the second day, demand was so high, the publisher ordered a fourth printing.
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- LiveNation was dealt a legal blow, with the company unable to dismiss an investor class action lawsuit, Winston Cho reported. (THR)
- Brave new world: "Streaming revenue is poised to overtake pay TV subscription revenue by the third quarter of 2024, boosted by the recent uptick in ad-supported offerings," Lucas Manfredi reported, citing a forecast from a research firm. (The Wrap)
- Alex Weprin reported that the new sports super-streaming joint venture by Disney, Fox Corporation, and Warner Bros. Discovery took all the major sports leagues "off guard." (THR)
- Isabella Simonetti reported on Fox News' "streaming playbook," which she described as a mixture of "Hollywood stars and conservative documentaries." (WSJ)
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- Shakeup at Disney: Sean Bailey exited as president of Disney's live-action division after 15 years, with Searchlight co-president David Greenbaum being tapped by the Magic Kingdom to take over as head of Disney Live action and president of 20th Century Studios. (Deadline)
- The Economist named Luke Bradley-Jones president; Leon Saunders Calvert president of Economist Intelligence; and Hal Hodson Americas editor. (Adweek/TBN)
- Telemundo tapped Gemma Garcia as executive vice president of news. (The Wrap)
- POLITICO Magazine hired Ankush Khardori as a senior writer. (POLITICO)
- Business Insider upped Mia de Graaf to deputy executive editor. (TBN)
- Bloomberg News promoted Christine Buurma to senior editor and hired Pamela Barbaglia to cover mergers and acquisitions. (TBN/TBN)
- The NYT hired Brandon Crain and Natoria Carey as operations managers and named Will Tilghman as a video journalist. (NYT/NYT)
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CNN Photo Illustration/Yousef Masoud/SOPA Images/Sipa/AP |
First in Reliable | Not so HonestReporting: The NYT on Monday sent a blistering letter to HonestReporting, the staunchly pro-Israel media watchdog that has a history of making misleading accusations against the news media. In the letter, written by The NYT's lead newsroom lawyer David McCraw, the outlet blasted HonestReporting for continuing to fuel the narrative that one of its photographers was somehow complicit in the 10/7 Hamas attack. "In November, you acknowledged publicly that you had no evidence to back up your claims. Yet you persist in the smear," McCraw wrote to HonestReporting executive director Gil Hoffman. "No one doubts your right to publish harsh criticism of the press and ask hard questions about coverage. But a line is crossed when your facile 'just asking questions' posturing is nothing more than a self-granted license to be another purveyor of disinformation online."
The scathing message from McCraw came days after he sent a similar letter to the Office of the Consulate General of Israel in New York. In that letter, McCraw noted, "These attacks on Mr. Masoud are an attack not just on The New York Times but on photojournalists who are doing essential work in conflict areas. They put their lives at risk daily, working under conditions that often require them to rush into danger to bear witness and document important events." A spokesperson for the consulate general did not respond to my request for comment. |
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- The NYT said it is probing a freelancer after she liked several posts on X that indicated a pro-Israel bias. (Daily Beast)
- Speaking of the Gray Lady, Adam Rubenstein — one of the editors who worked on The NYT's infamous Tom Cotton op-ed — published his account of the now nearly four-year-old incident. (The Atlantic)
- And Donald Trump has paid The NYT $392K to cover the paper's legal fees after his failed lawsuit over an investigation into his finances. (CNN)
- Though CPAC denied that Nazi sympathizers were openly present at the right-wing conference, NBC News' Ben Goggin posted visual evidence indicating otherwise, Justin Baragona reported. (Daily Beast)
- Twitter brought to life: LibsOfTikTok creator Chaya Raichik sat down with Taylor Lorenz for an "agonizing interview," Brooke Leigh Howard wrote, noting the right-wing online personality made a number of repugnant comments while wearing a shirt "with an apparent image of Lorenz gagging." (Daily Beast)
- Russia is "already spreading disinformation" to "damage President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats" ahead of the 2024 election, Dan De Luce and Kevin Collier report. (NBC News)
- A Reuters fact check found no evidence a Rachel Maddow screenshot circulating on X used to push anti-vaccine narratives is real. (Reuters)
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CNN Photo Illustration/Mark Schiefelbein/AP |
Supremes Struggle Over Socials: The Supreme Court on Monday heard a landmark case that could have vast implications for how content is moderated on social media. The justices "expressed skepticism Monday about state laws in Texas and Florida designed to stop social media giants from throttling conservative views," CNN's John Fritze, Brian Fung, and Catherine Thorbecke reported. Of course, this is where I interject to note that social media companies are not targeting conservative views. Their policies are targeted toward limiting hate speech and misinformation from running rampant on their platforms. Regardless, per CNN's reporting trio, "During nearly four hours of oral arguments, the justices appeared divided along non-ideological lines as they wrestled with whether social media companies like Meta and X have have created a 'public square' that sets them apart from other private entities." Read the full story here.
🔍 Zooming in: "Despite the high stakes involved and the potential to radically change how millions of Americans get their news and information on the popular sites," Fritze, Fung, and Thorbecke wrote, "several of the justices appeared to be angling for a potential outcome that would keep the laws on hold temporarily and allow lower courts to further review the impact on a wide range of internet sites." |
Google Restores News Tab: The "news" tab is once again available to all Google users. The Silicon Valley company told me on Monday that it has completed a test that resulted in some users having the invaluable search feature disabled from their search options. "The News filter is available to users now and we do not have plans to remove it," a company spokesperson said in a statement. "In an effort to better understand the preferences of our users, we were testing different ways to show filters on Search and as a result, a small subset of users were temporarily unable to access some of them." 🔍 Zooming in: The news might help news organizations breathe a little easier, at least for the time being. The digital publishing world is already tough enough at the moment, as evidenced by the tumult coursing through the news industry. Turning off even more referral traffic to publishers would certainly not have helped. But with Gemini poised to take a larger role on Google Search, one does wonder whether that might ultimately be in the cards. Of course, Google is saying it has no "plans" to remove the news feature. But no company ever announces such "plans" — until the day they do. |
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- Amanda Silberling reports on how Reddit's IPO could "usher in the next big meme stock." (TechCrunch)
- Demis Hassabis, the executive behind Google's DeepMind, said the company's Gemini A.I. image generator could be back up in a "couple of weeks." (Business Insider)
- Microsoft boss Brad Smith, released a list of A.I. principles. (Reuters)
- Meta said it will "activate an Elections Operations Center to identify potential threats" from A.I. and other forms of disinformation ahead of the E.U. elections. (Reuters)
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CNN Photo Illustration/Andrew Kelly/Reuters |
Baldwin's July Battle: Alec Baldwin's involuntary manslaughter charge in the shooting death of "Rust" cinematographer Halyna Hutchins will head to trial this summer. Jury selection for the trial will begin in July and is expected to last eight days, according to a Monday court filing. Baldwin has pleaded not guilty. USA Today's Kimi Robinson has more here. ► Meanwhile, The LAT's Meg James reports on how prosecutors in the case must grapple with "a complicating piece of evidence: a damaged gun." |
A Fawning Fran: After 118 days of railing against streaming services in her role as SAG-AFTRA president, Fran Drescher played the part of a Netflix spokesperson on Saturday evening at the 2024 SAG Awards, the first major award show aired by a streaming giant. "All's well that ends well. And now, we can celebrate ourselves – and also, being on Netflix where people can see this around the world," Drescher told CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister on the red carpet, reflecting on the "arduous year" and "unrelenting stress" of the actors' strike that resulted in a groundbreaking deal with the studios.
🔍 Zooming in: "It's business as usual. Once the deal is made, we both sign on the dotted line. You know, all is forgotten," Drescher told Wagmeister, praising Netflix boss Ted Sarandos. "I never thought that anybody that I was negotiating with was evil, or somebody that I wouldn't enjoy speaking with at a cocktail party. But when you were across the table and I want something and they don't want to give it, there's going to be tension." What a difference a few months — and lots of money — can make. Last year on the picket lines, Drescher equated studio chiefs to "land barons of a medieval time," telling Wagmeister that she found remarks made by Bob Iger "repugnant and out of touch," and that if she worked for Disney, "I would lock him behind doors and never let him talk to anybody about this." How times have changed! |
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- Didn't catch the show? Alli Rosenbloom and Lisa Respers France have the list of winners and other highlights here. (CNN)
- "24 hours of awards shows": Pete Hammond writes about his "lost weekend inside The SAGs, Spirits, and PGAs." (Deadline)
- Elaine Low spoke with Teamsters boss Lindsay Dougherty as IATSE starts its negotiations with the AMPTP. (The Ankler)
- "Do Nielsen ratings really reflect what people want from streamers?," asks Josef Adalian. (The Vulture)
- Jon Stewart's Feb. 19 "The Daily Show," his second back in the late-night seat, saw his audience grow 48% on-week, up to 2.44 million total viewers, according to the Nielsen live + three days numbers. (TheWrap)
- "One Love" passed the $120 million mark at the global box office. (THR)
- As "Late Night" turns 10, Seth Meyers looks back on a decade in the host seat. "We thought we could be a sane voice to a sane world, and now the world is a little bit crazy and it's made us crazy, too," Meyers joked to Adam Chitwood. (TheWrap)
- "The more comfortable you are, the better the show is," Meyers added to Rick Porter. (THR)
- "The Talk" hosts Jerry O'Connell and Natalie Morales sent their "heartfelt condolences" to Wendy Williams amid her aphasia and dementia diagnosis. (TheWrap)
- David S. Goyer, one of the co-creators behind Apple TV+'s "Foundation," will step back from his duties as showrunner. (THR)
- Warner Bros. Pictures released the first trailer for "Horizon: An American Saga," starring Kevin Costner. (YouTube)
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Thank you for reading! This newsletter was edited by Jon Passantino and produced with the assistance of Liam Reilly. Have feedback? Send us an email. You can follow us on Instagram, Threads, and LinkedIn. We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow. |
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