Warner Bros. Discovery is on the shot clock with the NBA, News Corporation strikes a major deal with OpenAI, Vivek Ramaswamy takes an activist stake in BuzzFeed, a coalition of journalists write Judge Juan Merchan objecting to Monday's closure of proceedings, TikTok plans to lay off a large number of staffers, "Deadpool & Wolverine" break R-rated box office presale records, and more. But first, the A1.

The Postman's Plan

CNN Photo Illustration/Elliott O'Donovan for The Washington Post/Getty Images

On Wednesday, Will Lewis, the newly minted publisher and chief executive of The Washington Post, strode on stage before gathered staffers at the company's D.C. headquarters to outline his vision for shepherding the iconic newspaper into a financially prosperous future.

Dressed in a navy blue blazer and button down shirt, along with his trademark sneakers (the Brit is known to be partial to the casual footwear), Lewis first delivered the cold hard reality to his assembled workforce. He candidly explained the depths of The Post's recent financial woes, revealing that it had lost $77 million over the last year and seen a dramatic 50% drop in audience since the highs of 2020.

"To speak candidly," Lewis told staffers at the top of the 90-minute meeting, "we are in a hole, and we have been for some time."

But Lewis said he has a plan to rescue the renowned newspaper that has broken some of the biggest stories of our time and turned its most influential journalists into household names. That plan, officially dubbed the "build it" phase of the turnaround project (which follows the "say it" and "fix it" phases), was defined by a pyramid shared with staffers in a Powerpoint presentation.

The pyramid, aimed at helping employees visualize new business opportunities, showed the traditional subscription membership stacked along with new subscription and payment offerings for readers.

Among the new revenue streams are "flexible payments," which were described to staffers as "frictionless payments" that would target a "likely untapped" audience. In other words, a person who may be interested in reading a single story on The Post's website will soon be able to make that one-time purchase via a service like Apple Pay. I'm told that feature will, in fact, start to roll out next quarter.

Additional subscription tiers, dubbed Post Pro and Post Plus, are also in the works, targeting working professionals and diehard readers with additional products, including a forthcoming newsletter focused on the climate and economy. The plan follows similar premium subscription offerings from the likes of Axios and POLITICO, which have introduced "pro" plans that have helped tap into new revenue streams. 

"We think that we’ve been a one-size-fits-all organization for too long, so we’re excited to create a new set of consumer and professional products that better meets the needs of our multi-faceted audiences," Karl Wells, chief growth officer at The Post, explained. 

Lewis' plan, however, included more than just revamping The Post's subscription offerings. Silicon Valley veteran Vineet Khosla, the newspaper's chief technology officer, appeared onstage, speaking to staffers about the need to integrate artificial intelligence into The Post's newsroom.

"I totally get that there is a huge fear of A.I. everywhere," he said. "But I want us to go beyond the fear. The way I see us operate is we have A.I. everywhere. We have A.I. in our newsroom; we have A.I. with our consumers; we have A.I. in the business… Start thinking of it as a copilot."

The experimentation with machine language models is already underway. The Post has started using A.I.-generated voices to allow people to listen to select newsletters. And, last week, Executive Editor Sally Buzbee announced in an internal memo an expanded version of article takeaways, which will be generated by A.I. and edited by humans in the newsroom. 

At the same time, Kathy Baird, The Post's chief communications officer, told staffers at the Wednesday meeting that the newspaper plans to strengthen audience relationships with its journalists, aiming to promote key journalists that create its reporting and connect them with readers. While The Post clearly plans to bet big on infusing its products with A.I., it wants to emphasize the human element of its journalism.

Whether the multi-pronged initiative is enough to turn The Post around, of course, remains to be seen. It goes without saying that Lewis and the newspaper's leadership team have their work cut out for them, as evidenced by the poor state of affairs that Lewis himself disclosed to staffers. But the new publisher voiced confidence that these measures will put The Post on track for success. 

"I really hope at some point in the future, when you look back on this day," he told staffers, "it's actually quite a significant day in the history of our company."

CNN Photo Illustration/Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images

WBD's Shot Clock Stress: Warner Bros. Discovery's partnership with the NBA has seen better days. Sports Business Journal's Tom Friend reported Wednesday that the basketball league is "formalizing written contracts with Disney, NBC, and Amazon this week, with sources calling it the final stage of media rights negotiations that may inevitably lead incumbent [WBD] to take legal action." Per Friend, NBCU's proposal for the "B" package is "believed to be worth between $2.5B and $2.6B annually," in addition to other perks like two primetime broadcasts a week.

Here's how Friend sees it playing out: "The final tweaks ... are expected to be finalized in the coming days or week, at which time sources said all three networks will go to their respective leadership groups to have their contracts approved. At that point, sources said the league will take NBC's contract to WBD to see if WBD CEO David Zaslav is able to match it in 'total value.' Considering WBD is $40B in debt and does not have the over-the-air infrastructure of NBC, sources believe WBD would need to pay more than $2.6B to match the deal and that NBC's overall bid could be structured in a way (for example, multiple weekly over-the-air games) that makes it virtually impossible for WBD to equal. Sources said Zaslav would then essentially have three choices: pass on the NBA, drastically overpay for the 'B' package or take the NBA to court over the definition of a match." Read Friend's full story.

🔎 Zooming in: A spokesperson for WBD (which, I should note, is the parent company of CNN), declined to comment. But WBD chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels addressed the matter at J.P. Morgan's annual TMC conference. "We value the product and we’re very hopeful that we’re going to be able to find a solution here that’s mutually beneficial to both sides," Wiedenfels said. "We do have a contractual matching right and that’s an important part of our ongoing contractual relationship. But that’s about as much as I want to say about the NBA." Meanwhile, TNT's "Inside the NBA" co-host Charles Barkley, who has been quite open about the less-than-ideal situation, said Wednesday on SiriusXM that it "just sucks right now" for WBD staffers. "I’m worried about all the people I work with," Barkley said. 

CNN Photo Illustration/Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images

Murdoch's OpenAI Marriage: Well, this wasn't the big marriage we were expecting Rupert Murdoch to say "I do" to this month! The media mogul's publishing arm, News Corporation, and OpenAI announced Wednesday that they had struck a major licensing deal, which The WSJ (owned by News Corp.) reported was potentially valued at more than $250 million over five years. "The pact acknowledges that there is a premium for premium journalism," News Corp. boss Robert Thomson said. "The digital age has been characterized by the dominance of distributors, often at the expense of creators, and many media companies have been swept away by a remorseless technological tide. The onus is now on us to make the most of this providential opportunity." The deal sent News Corp's shares spiking nearly 5% in after-hours trading. The WSJ Alexandra Bruell, Sam Schechner, and Deepa Seetharaman have more here. 

🔎 Zooming in: The announcement of the deal comes at a difficult moment for OpenAI, which was dealt a brutal image blow earlier this week at the hands of Scarlett Johansson. Even before then, the company — which until recently trained its bot on news content without permission — struggled greatly to convince creatives that it is not out to wreak havoc on their industries. Murdoch's move to strike a deal with Sam Altman's company also represents a far different strategy than the one adopted by A.G. Sulzberger at The NYT, which is taking the tech company to court, believing it is owed billions.

CNN Photo Illustration/Anthony Behar/Sipa USA

Vivek's BuzzFeed Troll: BuzzFeed's stock soared 20% on Wednesday (closing at $3.01 a share), but it was not for news that staffers would likely welcome. The self-described anti-woke warrior Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran for president while promoting January 6 and vaccine conspiracy theories, disclosed Wednesday that he had acquired an activist stake of 7.7% in the company. "Stay tuned," Ramaswamy told CNN's Krystal Hur through a spokesperson. The one-time GOP candidate disclosed in the securities filing that he will seek a "shift in the company's strategy." Given Ramaswamy dislike for the media, particularly the millennial-focused media, it's hard to view this as anything short of a troll — one that he was able to pull off because of BuzzFeed's rock-bottom stock price. That said, it is a very real issue that BuzzFeed boss Jonah Peretti will have to grapple with. How he does that remains unclear. "BuzzFeed is purposely structured to protect its editorial integrity," a company spokesperson told me. "We are always open to hearing ideas from our shareholders." Read Hur's full story here.

First in Reliable |Pushback from the Press: A coalition of reporters on Wednesday wrote a letter to Judge Juan Merchan, who is presiding over the Donald Trump hush-money trial, formally objecting "to the abrupt closure of proceedings" that occurred Monday when he admonished witness Robert Costello. "Given the public's First Amendment right of access to judicial proceedings, we ask that the Court provide a basis in law for the decision to remove the press, without affording them or their representative an opportunity to be heard," the reporters wrote, adding that courts have "repeatedly held that journalists have the right to attend" proceedings. The letter was signed by reporters from a number of outlets, including CNN, CBS News, The NYT, Business Insider, ABC News, BBC News, Associated Press, NPR, POLITICO, and others. You can read the letter here.

CNN Photo Illustration/Roslan Rahman/AFP/Getty Images

TikTok Takes a Trim: Severe cuts are en route for TikTok. The short-form video platform thats fighting a divest-or-ban law in the US, plans to lay off "large swaths of its operations and marketing workforce," CNN's Brian Fung reported Wednesday, confirming a report from The Information's Erin Woo and Kaya Yurieff. "The global layoffs are expected to hit teams that handle user support and communications, as well as content and marketing," Fung added, reporting the current global user operations team "will be dismantled as part of the move." Read Fung's story.

CNN Photo Illustration/Marvel Studios

An R-Rated Record: Have you bought your tickets yet? Marvel's highly anticipated "Deadpool & Wolverine" has set a new record for the most first-day ticket sales at AMC Theatres for any R-rated film movie. That's according to AMC Theatres boss Adam Aron who said that "some 200,000 movie fans" have already purchased a ticket from the company. AMC isn't alone, either. Fandango also reported a huge rush in ticket sales, saying the film has nabbed the record for best first-day ticket sales of 2024. "Deadpool and Wolverine are proving to be the dynamic duo, smashing records before appearing on the big screen," Fandango executive Jerramy Hainline said. THR's Pamela McClintock has more here.

► Related: Hugh Jackman said that he thought he was "done" with Wolverine, but when Ryan Reynolds approached him about their upcoming film, he committed without first telling his agent.