Volodymyr Zelensky rips Tucker Carlson's "bulls**t" interview with Vladimir Putin, CBS News says it will return Catherine Herridge's documents, OpenAI's Sora already starts costing Hollywood jobs, journalist Timothy Burke is indicted in the Tucker Carlson leaked tapes case, extremism was on full display at CPAC, Reddit files to go public in an unusual IPO, the trial of "Rust" armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, Wendy Williams is diagnosed with aphasia and dementia, Andy Cohen apologizes for "inappropriate" behavior, and so much more. But first, the A1.

The Vice Versa

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The digital media revolution is over.

Its two leaders, Vice Media and BuzzFeed , are in a frenetic retreat, surrendering much of their online empires as they try to protect what remains of their core assets. Having once threatened to upend the entire industry and usher in a new era of news distribution and monetization, the former digital media darlings are now merely attempting to survive in any form they can.

As they retreat, their large newsrooms once filled with rows of journalists are now shutting off the lights and closing their doors. BuzzFeed, already slimmed down after several waves of layoffs, announced this week that it will slash another 16% of its staff as it undergoes "planned strategic restructuring" to reduce costs. And Vice Media said Thursday that it will lay off hundreds of staffers as it ceases publishing on its own website and pivots into a business that resembles a studio.

"It's devastating to have a group of reporters who have made such a significant impact in the world have their jobs end in this way," one senior Vice Media staffer told me about the ugly state of affairs.

All digital publishers have struggled in recent years as they navigate brutal industry headwinds, brought on by a softened advertising market now dominated by Big Tech titans and plummeting referral traffic. Not to mention, the looming threat of artificial intelligence, also brought on by Big Tech titans.

Both Vice Media and BuzzFeed have been avatars for the entire industry, having served as the two highest-profile pioneers that paved the (short) road for other digital-first upstarts. At one point, the outlets inspired fear in their legacy media competitors, with each valued at billions of dollars while making splashy hires and threatening further disruption.

Now they're struggling to keep their head above water.

The demise of Vice Media as we know it is a particularly hard pill to swallow. Staffers at the outlet, who I'm told will receive severance if they fall under the knife, caught wind that something was awry many hours before chief executive Bruce Dixon delivered his memo. Ahead of the announcement, the mood inside Vice Media was grim. Staffers struggled to work amid rumors circulating about the outlet’s fate, with one staffer telling me that it was like watching "the violinists playing aboard the sinking Titanic."

Then, late in the 3pm ET hour, The NYT's Benjamin Mullin confirmed their worst fears, reporting that mass layoffs were en route. Finally, at around 5pm ET, Dixon officially informed his workforce of the excruciating decision and drastic changes that the company would implement under its new private equity owners, led by Fortress Investment Group.

Dixon said in his note that Vice Media had determined it was "no longer cost-effective" for the company to distribute its digital content on its own. Instead, he said, it will "look to partner with established media companies to distribute our digital content, including news, on their global platforms, as we fully transition to a studio model." No word on who those partners might be.

The company also has to determine what to do with Refinery29 and Motherboard. Dixon said that Vice Media is in "advanced talks" to sell the former. And I'm told a number of discussions are underway about what to do with Motherboard, with one possibility being to license the tech-focused vertical to another company that would operate it, a la the Sports Illustrated model. From what I gleaned Thursday, executive are not certain whether the content the site has published through the years will remain online.

Meanwhile, the hundreds of staffers left wondering their fate will have to suffer through the weekend to learn whether they are out of a job. A cruel move, to say the least. Regardless, staffers on the digital publishing side have largely already accepted their fate.

"I think most of us have seen the writing on the wall: there are simply not enough lifeboats, and highly unlikely that the skeleton crew of us on digital news will be invited onboard one," the employee, who likened Vice Media to the sinking Titanic, told me.

In the wake of the mass layoffs, it's hard to imagine the brand will be the same. They never are. The internet is littered with zombie publications, carrying familiar names but lacking the souls they once had, transformed into mere shells of their once vibrant selves.

Strikingly, as the Vice Media staff received the devastating news Thursday, co-founder Shane Smith, whose salesman-like bravado made him more than $100 million from the outlet, was nowhere to be found.

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Zelensky Zings Carlson: Suffice to say, Volodymyr Zelensky doesn't think highly of Tucker Carlson. During an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier, the Ukrainian president was asked about the chat the right-wing extremist had with Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month. Zelensky replied bluntly: "I don’t have time to hear more than two hours of bullshit about us. About the world, about the United States, about our relations." Mediaite's Colby Hall has more.

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Conceding Catherine's Cache: CBS News said Thursday that it will return documents to Catherine Herridge after the national security correspondent was laid off last week as part of cost-cutting measures that hit the broadcast outlet. Questions about Herridge's personal belongings were raised by Jonathan Turley in a piece for The Hill , which accused the network of having seized her files. It was a characterization that CBS News strongly denied to me, but which prompted the Freedom of the Press Foundation and SAG-AFTRA to release statements denouncing the move. 

Regardless, by Thursday afternoon, the matter appeared to be well on its way to being resolved. A CBS spokesperson told me, "Catherine’s personal belongings were delivered to her home one week ago, and we are prepared to pack up the rest of her files immediately on her behalf – with her representative present as she requested. We are awaiting a response from Catherine and/or her representative to do so. We have respected her request to not go through the files, and out of our concern for confidential sources, the office she occupied has remained secure since her departure."

Timothy and the Tucker Tapes: Former journalist Timothy Burke has been charged with 14 federal crimes over the alleged hack and leaking of a series of unflattering behind-the-scenes clips of then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson. That's according to a grand jury indictment unsealed Thursday, which accused Burke of working with an unidentified second person. The charges against Burke, who through his lawyers denied breaking the law, followed a Justice Department criminal hacking probe opened last year after unaired videos from Carlson’s former show surfaced online. In one unaired clip posted by Vice in 2022, Kanye West was seen making antisemitic remarks to Carlson. The following year, after Carlson was fired from Fox News, the progressive watchdog Media Matters posted embarrassing behind-the-scenes footage of Carlson making crude remarks while joking with staff and denigrating the Fox Nation streaming service.

🔍 Zooming in: The fact that previously unaired footage found its way to the outlets confounded media observers, who wondered who could have been behind the leaks. Megyn Kelly even floated a conspiracy theory suggesting that the right-wing network was actually behind the leaks to embarrass Carlson, whom it had just fired. But according to this federal indictment, it was Burke and an unidentified second person. Here's my full story. 

CNN Photo Illustration/Dado Ruvic/Reuters

Reddit's Unusual IPO: It's happening! Reddit on Thursday filed to go public — and in a bit of an unusual way. The company, which will become the first social media company IPO since Pinterest in 2019, said in its S-1 filing that it wants its die-hard users' "deep sense of ownership" to be "reflected in real ownership." Which means that the company will "invite the users and moderators who have contributed to Reddit to buy shares in our IPO, alongside our investors." CNBC's Jesse Pound noted that the arrangement "could make the deal riskier for investors." Read Pound's full story here.

🔍 Zooming in: In the filing, Reddit said it had $804 million in sales in 2023. The company said it is working on infusing its advertising with A.I., which should add a considerable boost. Regarding ownership, the filing revealed that OpenAI boss Sam Altman owns 8.7% of the company's stock, making him the third biggest investor, behind Condé Nast parent Advance Magazine Publishers (34%) and Tencent Cloud (11%). THR's Alex Weprin has more on that here.

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The 'Rust' Trial: The armorer who was responsible for the firearms on the set of "Rust," Hannah Gutierrez Reed , is officially on trial. The jury trial commenced on Thursday, with prosecutors accusing her of involuntary manslaughter after a gun Alec Baldwin fired on the set killed the film's cinematographer, Halyna Hutchins . A key question: who is responsible for six live bullets making their way onto the set and into the gun? Her defense attorney agreed negligence led to the tragic 2021 accident, but laid the blame at the feet of Baldwin. The trial is expected to last about two weeks. CNN's Christina Maxouris and Eric Levenson have details here .