Up first today, a tour across the country, providing a reality check about the turmoil in local news...
Youngstown won't have a daily newspaper anymore
NiemanLab's Joshua Benton wrote Friday: "The biggest question in local news has been when newspapers will stop shrinking and start closing. Well, the daily in Youngstown, Ohio is closing. Not a good sign."
Staffers at The Vindicator were informed on Friday that the paper will shut down on August 31. The terrible news hit just a few days after the paper celebrated its 150th anniversary. "Due to great financial hardships, we spent the last year searching for a buyer to continue to operate The Vindicator and preserve as many jobs as possible while maintaining the paper's voice in the community. That search has been unsuccessful," the paper told readers in a letter that will appear in Saturday's edition.
"This isn't a two-paper town becoming a one-paper town. This isn't cutting print days. Just...no newspaper in a city of 67,000 anchoring a metro area of 565,000," Benton wrote.
Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter Jordyn Grzelewski said she wrote the news of the closure with tears in her eyes. "This is an incalculable loss for the Youngstown community and local journalism," she tweeted...
"In New Orleans, two rival newspaper organizations become one this weekend"
That's the headline on Rick Edmonds' latest for Poynter. "At midnight Sunday," he wrote, "the switch will be flipped, and The New Orleans Advocate will absorb the Times-Picayune and its NOLA.com digital site."
Sounds painless. But it hasn't been. Many Times-Picayune staffers lost their jobs. The Advocate "has hired about 25 staffers, half of them for the newsroom. Many, but not all, were from the Times-Picayune." Some T-P staffers didn't even bother to apply because The Advocate was offering significantly less pay.
"Putting the two together has probably been the toughest part of the transition," Edmonds wrote... Details here...
"Radical change" needed in Philly
Now to Philadelphia, for another gut check about what this digital revolution is like on the ground. The Philadelphia Media Network, owned by the nonprofit Lenfest Institute for Journalism, houses the Inquirer and the Daily News. All PMN employees received an email last week about management's plan to "unlock the future." Senior leaders have been meeting for the past several months with the belief that time is of the essence.
"Radical" changes are needed, they said in an eight-page document that was shared with employees and obtained by CNN Business. "We have fewer than five years to make fundamental changes in our business, our products, our operations and our culture," management wrote. "Importantly, many urgent decisions must be made now to secure our future as a company."
The local union criticized management for sharing the document while buyouts and layoffs are underway. But I've got to be honest: I appreciated the live-or-die urgency of this memo. A few key lines that apply to other outlets too:
-- CHANGE: "The future of media is digital, and the bottom line is that we're ill-prepared to confront the challenges and opportunities before us. This calls for a radical change in the way we do business."
-- CULTURE: "Our transformation will require a series of major structural changes. But equally important will be significant changes in our culture, how we interact with one another, and how we work together."
-- AUDIENCE: "Perhaps the greatest challenge we face in recalibrating the print-digital revenue mix is identifying, targeting and cultivating our future audiences with products that resonate."
-- EXPANSION: "Our print audience is rapidly eroding and our current digital audience shares too many characteristics of our dying print readership. Therefore, our digital news content and product portfolios will need to appeal to people beyond the current audience of the printed paper."
I shared the memo via Scribd so you can read it for yourself...
The struggle is real... in newsrooms all across the country... but at the same time, there's so much good being done. Look to Annapolis for inspiration...
The Capital Gazette's coverage of its worst day ever
Friday's front page of the Capital Gazette carried black-and-white portraits of the shooting survivors and family members of the victims. The photos were taken by Paul W. Gillespie, who is himself one of the survivors. Taking the portraits helped him "through months of spiraling depression and PTSD rocked by frequent bouts of anxiety," Capital Gazette staffer Angela Roberts wrote in Friday's paper.
The Capital Gazette, along with its sister paper The Baltimore Sun, thoroughly covered the one-year anniversary of the shooting in its newsroom. "On Friday morning, a garden was dedicated to the Capital Gazette victims' memory in Acton's Cove Waterfront Park before family and friends they loved, coworkers who mourn their loss, readers of the articles they wrote and some officials they covered," The Sun's Jean Marbella wrote... | |
WEEKEND PLANNER
Saturday: The G20 summit concludes in Osaka...
Sunday: "The Loudest Voice" debuts on Showtime...
Sunday: On the season three premiere of HLN's "Inside Evil," Chris Cuomo has the final interview with convicted serial killer Andrew Urdiales...
Monday: Alex Jones is expected to be deposed as part of an ongoing lawsuit brought by families of Sandy Hook victims...
Tuesday: "Spider-Man: Far From Home" lands in theaters...
Hearing "The Loudest Voice" | | (Illustration via Vulture)
Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the Roger Ailes biography "The Loudest Voice in the Room," is one of the brains behind Showtime's "The Loudest Voice," which has its big premiere Sunday night. The seven-episode series begins with the birth of Fox News in 1996... and ends with the sexual misconduct scandal that befell Ailes in 2016.
The first few episodes already have TV insiders buzzing. And I suspect the buzz will become louder as the later episodes air deep into the summer. Brian Lowry, in his CNN.com review, says Russell Crowe rises to the challenge of playing Ailes "with an epic performance." He says the series is "worth watching for anyone interested in the political-media nexus where Ailes reigned." And "setting aside politics, 'The Loudest Voice' showcases an impressive cast that also includes Naomi Watts as Gretchen Carlson and Seth MacFarlane as Fox public-relations chief Brian Lewis," Lowry writes.
>> Showrunner Alex Metcalf tells the NYT that the title of the series works in two ways. "While it's always Roger's show, because it just is, her voice becomes paramount. Gretchen, at the end, has the loudest voice, not Roger."
More to read...
-- Sherman's former employer, NYMag, spoke with him about how "Voice" went from book to movie idea to miniseries project...
-- James Poniewozik's examination of the series -- plus HBO's "Succession" and the Broadway show "Ink" -- begins with this outstanding line: "What, you thought a little thing like dying would shut Roger Ailes up?"
-- Steven Zeitchik's piece for WaPo: "Ailes again stirs controversy, this time from the grave..."
On Sunday's "Reliable Sources..."
"Loudest Voice" is the latest show from the ever-expanding Blumhouse Productions. Jason Blum will join me live on Sunday, along with Metcalf... Plus Bianna Golodryga, Katie Rogers, Frank Bruni, Elora Mukherjee, and E. Jean Carroll...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Speaking of Fox News, full disclosure here: I'm working on a book about Fox in the Trump age and Trump in the Fox age. Mike Allen broke the news on Friday... (Axios)
-- With the US women's soccer team's 2-1 win over France on Friday, the World Cup semifinals suddenly became a HUGE story for the American news media. "The team will play England in the semifinal on July 2..." (CNN)
-- Co-captain Megan Rapinoe scored both goals. Yahoo's Dan Wetzel: "If you're going to get into a fight with Donald Trump, well, that's one heck of a way to close out the week..." (Yahoo)
-- I'm curious to see how much attention this headline gets into the weekend: "Jimmy Carter suggests Trump is an illegitimate president..." (CNN)
The latest from Osaka... | | -- CNN's home page headline right now: "Trump tweets Kim Jong Un an invitation to 'shake his hand' at the DMZ."
-- The Hill's Jordan Fabian said that when he interviewed Trump on Monday, "Trump acknowledged likely visit to the DMZ and said he 'might' want to meet KJU there. WH asked we delay publication, citing security concerns. We agreed. Then he just tweeted it out..."
-- One of Friday morning's headlines via USA Today: "Trump vents to Putin about frustration with reporters..."
-- James Clapper on "AC360:" "If the president's instincts were allowed to prevail, he'd have a similar system for oppressing the media in this country as Putin enjoys in Russia..."
-- Per Bloomberg's Jennifer Jacobs, "multiple reporters in our WH press pool asked Trump and MBS about the death of columnist Jamaal Khashoggi, an international outrage. Neither answered..."
-- CNN's Jim Sciutto tweeted from the summit: "Excusing MBS for Khashoggi just now, joking with Putin about election meddling and 'getting rid of' journalists, and requesting another meeting with Kim -- Trump signaling once again that human rights are not a priority for his admin..."
-- Big picture view from NYT's Peter Baker: "A week ago, he was fingered by the UN as the probable mastermind behind one of the most grisly and sensational murders of recent years. But now Saudi's MBS is wandering around Osaka hobnobbing with presidents and premiers, including breakfast with Trump..."
IN OTHER NEWS...
A #DemDebate ratings record
"The viewers have spoken: Ready or not, the next presidential campaign is here," the NYT's Michael Grynbaum wrote Friday.
Indeed -- the debate ratings are a remarkable statement. The Kamala Harris and Joe Biden match-up was the highest-rated Dem debate in Nielsen ratings history, drawing 18.1 million viewers across NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo. The previous record was set in October 2015 when 15.5 million viewers watched the party's first debate of that season on CNN. Of course, the overall high water mark still stands at 24 million -- that was Trump's first debate back in August 2015 on Fox. Here's my full story...
Looking ahead...
With 15.3 million viewers on Wednesday... and 18.1 million on Thursday... Democratic officials are cheering the ratings news. "We're working hard at the @DNC to reach as many voters as possible, and I can't wait to do it again in Detroit!" DNC chair Tom Perez tweeted on Friday. Oh yes... Detroit... On Friday CNN rolled out some promos for those July 30/31 debates. Never too early to start, right?
Looking back...
One of the debate's five moderators, Chuck Todd, was singled out for criticism on Thursday night -- led by Chris Christie, who said on Stephen Colbert's show that Todd is the "most pretentious know-it-all on network news." Yahoo's Stephen Proctor says "Todd was trending on Twitter following the debate, with many people sharing Christie's sentiment." On Wednesday night, however, some folks praised Todd for his solid handling of the technical glitch.
Overall, I noticed lots of accolades for Rachel Maddow and Savannah Guthrie. John Hudak of Brookings said Guthrie "stood out as a model of who a moderator should be. She held candidates to account, asking tough questions and posed pointed follow-ups..."
Notes and quotes
-- Margaret Sullivan's column: "NBC played it smart by getting out of the way" when Harris challenged Biden... (WaPo)
-- During Thursday's debate Donald Trump Jr. shared, and then deleted, a tweet that "falsely claimed Senator Kamala Harris was not black enough to be discussing the plight of black Americans," Katie Rogers and Maggie Haberman reported... (NYT)
-- Craig Silverman and Jane Lytvynenko "traced the smears against Kamala Harris to Obama birthers and neo-Nazis..." (BuzzFeed News)
-- David Uberti with a big-picture view of what happened on Thursday: "Harris won the most precious commodity for a candidate, one political scientists say is most directly linked to poll results: media attention..." (Vice)
-- A great "inside the spin room" read from Manuel Roig-Franzia: "Biden's spin doctors, Beto's flop, a sea of sweat..." (WaPo)
-- A nonprofit group called GenderAvenger added up the "screen time of women vs men candidates" and the moderators at the debates... (GenderAvenger)
-- Sonia Saraiya says the debates proved that the "reality-TV era of politics isn't over..." (VF)
American Public Media wants to thank you...
 Katie Pellico writes: Look out for this full-page ad from American Public Media (APM) in this Sunday's edition of the NYT. The ad describes the recent SCOTUS decision in the case of Flowers v. Mississippi. APM reported on the case in Mississippi for over a year for the "In the Dark" podcast, uncovering the DA's history of racial discrimination in jury selection. Their findings were presented to the Supreme Court before Flowers' conviction was reversed last Friday.
>> Dave Kansas, APM's EVP and CCO, said the ad was meant to "show our immense gratitude for those who support the free press and help us investigate and share these stories." He added that the ad is "our effort to remind news consumers of the incredible amount of time, resources and energy that go into keeping all of us informed."
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- BI's Lucia Moses reports: "Apple is making changes to its subscription bundle, Apple News Plus, after a slow start, publishing execs say." According to her sources, Apple is "working to make the product more intuitive for users while addressing publisher-side concerns..." (BI)
-- Wondery "has raised $10 million in a funding round that values the podcast network at more than $100 million," Anne Steele reports... (WSJ)
-- Ken Doctor's latest is about the NYT's quest for "more and deeper engagement." Read about the site's "most prominent" personalization tool yet, called "For You..." (NiemanLab)
Tough times at Quartz...
...And the difficulties are emblematic of what lots of other digital publishers facing. Katie Pellico writes: On Wednesday, "Quartz laid off seven business-side employees, ranging from junior sales staff to a creative director," Digiday's Max Willens reports. This is the publication's second rounds of cuts this year. All in all this year, Willens says, "Quartz has seen 25 people, close to 10% of the company headcount, depart either voluntarily or through layoffs."
Amid a steep drop in site traffic, Quartz has been shifting to a subscription-focused business model... Willens' sources say "a focus on content that creates loyal readers rather than fly-by ones, and reporters working on members-only content in addition to their daily responsibilities, played a role in the drop." Read on...
First Look's cuts
First Look is making some cutbacks -- and two of the affected brands are Topic and The Nib. Matt Bors, editor of The Nib, notified readers that "after three and a half years, First Look Media has decided to no longer fund The Nib at the end of July and me and my team will be let go as part of a broader shift at the company." Bors said the publication is being handed over to him so that he can keep it going. As for Topic, the two-year-old site "still has a month left," Michelle Legro tweeted...
🎧 Podcast: My interview with E. Jean Carroll 🎧
"I'm glad I came forward," E. Jean Carroll told me in an interview for this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast. Carroll's allegation about Trump attacking her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid 1990's remains in the headlines -- and she says she's feeling "buoyant" because she's receiving so much support. (She says she has totally tuned out the right-wing figures who are criticizing her.)
People have been "stopping me and saying thank you," she said, "with tears welling in their eyes, and taking my hand and saying, 'I can't tell my story. Thank you for telling yours.'" Tune in to the podcast via TuneIn, Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, or your preferred app...
| | Kim Kardashian West, Esq. in 2022? You better believe it
Chloe Melas emails: I spoke with friends of Kim Kardashian and the legal team helping her prepare for the bar in 2022. Some fun facts I learned while reporting this piece out: Kardashian logs a minimum of 18 hours a week of studying... she's a "nerd," in the words of CNN's Van Jones... and part of her wants to carry on the legacy of her father the late Robert Kardashian who was one of OJ Simpson's defense attorneys.
Read here to find out how Kanye is helping support her, when she finds time to study and why she feels like a law degree is necessary...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- A public memorial has been scheduled for Saturday in Hawaii for "Dog the Bounty Hunter" star Beth Chapman, Lisa Respers France reports...
-- Chloe writes: Hugh Jackman surprised fans by serving them coffee in Boston...
-- Also via Chloe: Allison Williams and Ricky Van Veen have announced their split...
-- Megan Thomas flagged this fun Vulture piece: "What the most gif-able TV shows have in common..."
-- Speaking of... "Adam Scott tells Mitch McConnell to take down his 'Parks and Rec' GIF..."
| | | Thank you for reading! See you Sunday... | | | |
