| | | | | Exec summary: Trump's "real witch hunt..." Another moment of briefing room solidarity... More fallout from Disney's decision to fire James Gunn... And Sony wants a partner for Crackle. But first... | | Tronc laid off half the staff of the New York Daily News on Monday. Astonishingly, the cuts are not over yet. The publisher is laying off staffers at some of its other papers, CEO Justin Dearborn said in a Monday afternoon memo.
Tronc isn't sharing any more details about the cuts until Tuesday... But I'm told that Allentown, Pennsylvania's Morning Call had to let several staffers go. The publisher there, Robert York, is now taking charge of the Daily News. But before York headed to NYC, he held an "off the record" meeting with the Morning Call staff on Monday and blamed "budget" constraints for the cuts, per a source there.
Tronc says the cuts at the other papers are "much smaller." But still painful. This has been another grim day for local journalists and all of us who depend on them... | | "They'll see what's missing" | | Tom Kludt emails: Fifty percent. The number just boggles the mind. Half a newsroom, gone before noon. There's no sugarcoating it: this is is a dire development for the Daily News, one that might well presage more devastating announcements in the near future. One of my sources found one silver lining in that much of the local coverage -- the lynchpin of a daily that still resonates with the city's working class -- has been mostly spared. But the sports and photography desks were, in the words of my source, "eviscerated." The sports team, which owns the Daily News backpage, is down to a measly nine staffers; the visuals department, after shedding all 10 staff photographers, is down to seven. "I'm sure people will feel it in the paper," the source said. "They'll see what's missing."
Read Tom's full story here...
| | | EIC Jim Rich -- who reportedly fought the gutting of the newsroom -- was among the casualties on Monday. Remember, he was brought back to the paper just six months ago. Early Monday morning, he tweeted this... | | >> The WashPost's Paul Farhi says the NYDN employed 400 journalists in 1988. After Monday's cuts, it will "have a newsroom staff of just 45, according to people at the paper."
>> In the press box at Citi Field Monday night, there were empty seats where the Daily News reporters used to be... Photo here...
| | Making the product worse while making the public pay more... | | Alex Koppelman emails: What happened at the Daily News is a reminder that the crisis in local journalism right now isn't just falling ad rates or the threat of the digital duopoly: It's ownership that is incompetent or malicious or both. In any other industry, deliberately making a product worse and then asking consumers to pay more for it would rightly be seen as a stupid long-term move. In journalism, it's been the strategy for years.
And this is more evidence of the perils involved in the current fad for consolidation. News outlets vital to local communities, to the whole country -- indeed to democracy and good government both locally and nationally -- are increasingly reliant on the business sense and good graces of a handful of people, many with little or no real experience in journalism. The rest of us are left to hope they don't screw it up.
| | | Tom Kludt emails: That's the question among remaining and departed Daily News staffers -- and it's one that's been raised at other Tronc-owned papers. Just what is the strategy here? What's the longterm play? Nobody seems to know exactly. And Tronc has been in radio silence mode all day. But we'd be remiss if we didn't acknowledge here that the Daily News has been beset by enormous financial problems that predate Tronc; Mort Zuckerman, remember, tried unsuccessfully to sell the money-losing paper for years. As my source said: "Tronc's incompetence is real, and nobody has any faith that they have a strategy," the source said. "At the same time, I have to say honestly, if this were still Mort Zuckerman's paper, we would possibly be in the same place. He was figuring out what to do with losses..." | |  There was a tug-of-war over the NYDN Twitter feed on Monday... It appeared some of the laid-off staffers still had access to the account through the mid-afternoon... Splinter has a recap here.
Tuesday's NYDN front page makes no mention of the gutting of the paper's staff... But the NYPost has an editorial in Tuesday's paper about the "brutal" cuts. "We sincerely hope the remaining staff can find a way to turn things around," The Post says. "We want to beat the News, but not like this." | | Daily News departees gathered at the Bavaria Bier Haus on Stone Street for an afternoon and evening of drinking and talking. Zach Haberman, one of the laid-off staffers, told me it was still going at 8pm... He called it a "really nice outpouring (not a drink pun) from so many people and institutions..." Outlets like the NY Post helped pick up the tab.
"The real loser here is the people of this city," Haberman added... | | Terrible people dancing on NYDN's grave | | One more from Tom Kludt: My Twitter mentions were filled with well-wishes for the affected Daily News staffers, and mourning for what might be the beginning of the end for this venerable tabloid. But the feed also included a sinister sentiment, one that celebrated Monday's news. Some Trump supporters treated this as a victory, and they had no scruples over dancing on the grave. That reaction is no surprise: Trump, after all, has made the news media his number one enemy, and so an unemployed journalist is viewed by his legion of fans as progress.
To say nothing of the unseemliness of this reaction, it's also in need of a corrective. These people seem to believe that the Daily News is suffering because of its unflattering coverage of the president -- ignoring that the tabloid has faced headwinds long before Trump's political rise. Here's something they may not realize: the Daily News endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012, and in the subsequent years, Zuckerman tried desperately to find a buyer. Are we to believe that the paper suffered then for its criticism of Obama? | | Brian Lowry emails: There's no denying that the ownership decisions of companies like Tronc have been brutal on local newspapers, as Adam Weinstein noted on Twitter. But any discussion of the shrinking of the newspaper industry has to take into account the market forces that have undermined its business model, especially the loss of advertising, print circulation and classified ad sales due to the advent of the internet -- trading in print dollars, to use the old saying, for "digital dimes." And the industry has become perhaps too enamored with the promise of billionaire white knights, a la Jeff Bezos and now LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, to rescue them, or at least mitigate those financial pressures...
| | | The LAT, which just escaped Tronc, officially moved into a new building in El Segundo on Monday... Reporter Matt Pearce tweeted, "There are still construction workers roaming around, hammering and nailing things. But I don't mind the noise. It's the sound of somebody finally investing in our newsroom." | | -- How did "Fox & Friends First" end up booking the wrong lawmaker for an embarrassing Monday morning segment? It seems a booker, relying on way-out-of-date info, contacted the wrong PR person... (Boston.com)
-- It looks like Rupert Murdoch is positioning a protégé, Peter Rice, near the top of Disney, thereby allowing Murdoch to "maintain his influence over the Fox assets even after they're sold." Dylan Byers explains it here... (PACIFIC)
-- Susan Fowler Rigetti, "the woman who blew the whistle on Uber's culture of sexual harassment, has a new role." She will the tech editor for the NYT's Op-Ed section... (BI) | | Fallout from James Gunn firing | | | Support is growing for director James Gunn after his firing from "Guardians of the Galaxy 3" last week, Lisa Respers France reports... Gunn is responsible for his ffensive old social media posts, but there's blowback in Hollywood partly because Disney was the subject of a right-wing pressure campaign to dump Gunn... | | Protesting Disney's decision | | "Comedian Bobcat Goldthwait is protesting Disney's decision" by "asking the studio behind Marvel to remove his affiliation with its theme park rides," Variety reports.
Goldthwait wrote on Instagram, "love @jamesgunn. He's a loyal friend, super talented, passionate and kind." He also referenced one of the ways this story could boomerang: "I think James Woods may have recorded a voice for this new attraction, too. Why not check out some of his whacky past tweets?! They're a hoot!" | | | Brian Lowry emails: Gunn and Roseanne Barr occupy opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, but they both ran afoul of their social-media footprints, which prompted Disney to sever ties to them. Those decisions have also shed light a new reality regarding media giants -- namely, as they get bigger in pursuit of leverage, it exposes pressure points and vulnerabilities -- soft underbellies, if you will -- to vocal critics upset with them on one front or another; and because they're so big, these companies are better able to absorb such short-term losses. Read the rest here... | | "GMA Day" will be hosted by... | | NYPost's Ian Mohr had this scoop on Sunday: Michael Strahan and Sara Haines will co-host the third hour of "GMA" when the show starts in September.
On Monday morning, ABC made it official, and Haines announced her departure from "The View." ABC also gave the 1pm ET show a name: "GMA Day." How long do you think it will stay at 1pm before moving? | | By Oliver Darcy:
-- Yashar Ali scoops that "Fox & Friends Weekend" co-host Abby Huntsman is in talks with ABC to join "The View." If that ends up happening, she'd be yet another Fox News host to join the daytime talk show program… (HuffPost) Deadline says Ana Navarro's name is also in the mix to replace Haines... (Deadline)
-- Mike Shields reports that YouTube is "dangling 6-figure checks in front of its biggest stars" to keep them posting on the platform as competition emerges from Instagram. One person told Shields that in rare cases the checks can hit seven figures… (Business Insider)
-- The end has come for iDrudgeReport.com! The website, which provided readers a mobile-friendly version of the Drudge Report, has shuttered after Matt Drudge optimized the Drudge Report for mobile users... | | Is there a future press secretary on this list? | | | If Sarah Sanders steps down after the midterms, as many expect, who's on the "unofficial shortlist" to replace her? This Politico story, based on a variety of sources, lists Heather Nauert, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Tony Sayegh, Raj Shah... And a name I haven't seen mentioned before... Fox anchor Bill Hemmer... | | Another moment of briefing room solidarity | | | Last week it was The Hill's Jordan Fabian deferring to NBC's Hallie Jackson when Sanders tried to skirt one of Jackson's followups. On Monday it was CNN's Kaitlan Collins. Sanders said she had to "keep moving" when Jackson tried to follow up -- "Kaitlan, go ahead," she said more than once -- but Collins looked back over at Jackson, signaling for her NBC counterpart to keep speaking... | | "Trump's real witch hunt" | | That's what Erin Burnett called it on Monday night. "The president is threatening to punish people who disagree with him," she said. "And in his case, it's a very specific group of people: America's top former intelligence chiefs."
Reporters at the press briefing said there was an audible gasp when Sanders said Trump might strip six former officials of their security clearances. (Nevermind the fact that two of the six no longer have clearances.) "It's an unprecedented thing if it happens," Burnett said... | | Keeping our eyes on the Russia ball | | Was the threat about security clearances a "distraction" from Trump's ALL CAPS Iran provocation? Was the Iran tweet a "distraction" from the Russia mystery? I don't want to add to the speculation. But I do want to second what NBC's Ken Dilanian wrote on Monday:
"We should not move on from, or stop thinking about, how significant it is that after Helsinki and all the walkbacks, @realDonaldTrump tweeted that it was a hoax that Russia interfered in the election. A spit in the eye of his intelligence community." | | | For the record, part three | | | -- Do the feds now have tapes of Michael Cohen speaking with Sean Hannity? Of the 12 audio recordings that have been handed over, one includes Cohen talking with Trump. Some of the remaining eleven include Cohen's conversations with members of the media, CNN's Kara Scannell reports... (CNN)
-- Trump claimed on Monday that the WashPost "loses a fortune." In fact, it has reported a profit for the past two years. "This year we are profitable as well," editor Marty Baron told me recently...
-- Trump also reupped his assertions about "The Post serving as a lobbyist for Amazon." Baron responded: "The reality is he didn't present any evidence that we were lobbying for Amazon. The reason is because there is no evidence..." (WashPost)
-- MSNBC's Chris Hayes wonders: "Is it possible to say anything truly profound or new about Donald Trump at this moment in time?" (NYT) | | Lawyers for Alex Jones invoke Woodward and Bernstein's names | | | Oliver Darcy emails: Lawyers for Alex Jones apparently think the fringe right-wing radio host uses the same reporting methods as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The Associated Press reported on a motion Jones' attorneys filed Friday which asked a court to dismiss the defamation lawsuit filed by some of the families of the Sandy Hook victims. "Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein relied on allegations from 'Deep Throat' to link the Nixon Administration to the Watergate break-in," the motion said. "Such journalism, questioning official narratives, would be chilled if reporters were subject to liability if they turned out to be wrong." Read the full story here… | | Gaetz says he regrets appearing on InfoWars | | One more from Darcy: Sad breakup alert! Matt Gaetz and Alex Jones are trading barbs. Gaetz told The Hill in a Monday interview that he regretted having gone on InfoWars earlier this year. Gaetz said, "Upon further reflection, I think the things that Alex Jones has said and done are so hurtful to so many people that a member of Congress should not grace that platform and legitimize it." The Florida rep added, "I would not go back on Alex Jones' show."
That did not sit well with Jones, who accused Gaetz of trying to "appease the mainstream, leftist media." Mediaite has as a writeup of Jones' comments, in which he said, "[Gaetz] threw me under the bus mega-massively..." | | | For the record, part four | | | -- Alison Stewart will take over the 12 to 2pm time slot on WNYC in the fall... Leonard Lopate previously hosted then... (WNYC)
-- FBI special agent turned CNN analyst Josh Campbell is writing a book, "Crossfire Hurricane: Inside the War on the FBI," for Algonquin Books... (AP)
-- The students behind The March for Our Lives will release a book of essays and oral histories, "Glimmer of Hope: How Tragedy Sparked a Movement," in October... (People) | | Want to own a piece of Crackle? | | "Sony Pictures Television is looking for a strategic partner to grow its streaming video service Crackle," the LAT's Ryan Faughnder reports. Moelis & Co. has been hired "to explore potential deals to sell a stake" in the site.
More: "Sony is in the early stages of searching for an investor but hopes to complete the process in the next couple of months." He adds: "Sony does not want to sell the whole service..." | | What Sacha Baron Cohen is doing | | Brian Lowry emails: Regarding attempts to compare James O'Keefe and Sacha Baron Cohen -- as the NYT's Sopan Deb did -- although both use deception, the key, fundamental difference should be pretty obvious: O'Keefe specifically seeks to discredit people and institutions by capturing what they might say when they don't know that they're being filmed; Cohen's whole point is to test how far they'll go when they know that they are.
If you haven't heard about Sunday's episode yet, allow Lisa Respers France to catch you up. A Georgia state lawmaker, Jason Spencer, dropped his pants and yelled racial slurs in one of the show's set-ups. Details here... | | "Shark Week" viewing guide | | | For the record, part five | | | -- Who had the most fun at Comic Con? Chloe Melas says it was Mark Hamill...
-- Lisa Respers France has more on Nicole Maines, TV's first transgender superhero, who's also an activist who was at the center of a historic court case...
-- R. Kelly answered his critics by releasing a 19-minute "surprise song" called "I Admit," Lindsey Ellefson writes... | | Catch up on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" | | | You can listen to Sunday's "Reliable Sources" as a podcast through Apple Podcasts or other apps... Read the transcript here... Watch the video clips on CNN.com... Or watch the full episode through CNNgo or VOD... | | -- Russia watcher Jill Dougherty, a former CNN Moscow bureau chief, said "I think the media would be very helpful to people if you said, 'Okay, this is how propaganda is done. This is how you are being manipulated.'" Watch...
-- Olivia Nuzzi said pro-Trump talk show hosts "really are just an extension of the White House communications shop," so "interview" isn't the right word for those Q&A sessions...
-- Maggie Haberman said she wants to see more solidarity among members of the W.H. press corps. Here's the TV interview... You can hear our full conversation via the "Reliable" podcast...
-- I sparred with Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy about the Trump-Putin summit, the economy, the media, and Trump's dangerous depiction of journalists as the "enemy of the people." Ruddy said Trump is "very angry about the press treatment..."
-- Ruddy, an opponent of Sinclair's bid for Tribune, also reacted to the news that the deal is now imperiled. "The FCC acted as it was supposed to act," Ruddy said... | | | Let me know what you think of this newsletter. Email your likes, dislikes, thoughts: brian.stelter@turner.com | | | | | | |
