Hey, welcome to Wednesday. Here's the latest on Elon Musk, Breitbart, Kay Burley, Brendan Carr, Chris Anderson, the NYT, and much more...
|
Small publishers, big scoops |
As President Trump and Elon Musk remake the federal government through firings, orders and brute force, small news publishers that specialize in the federal workforce are landing big scoops and seeing equally big traffic gains.
Liam Reilly checked in with some of the editors.
Federal News Network deputy editor Jared Serbu said traffic in the past two weeks has been five to six times greater than a normal week in 2024. Government Executive exec editor Tanya Ballard Brown said her site has seen "a phenomenal increase in traffic."
Story after story on her site – from "Agencies ramp up pressure on their workers to quit" to "Unions sue Treasury over DOGE access to payment systems" – convey the current uncertainty inside federal agencies.
GovExec's collection of five trade-oriented sites have seen "more web traffic in the last two weeks than ever before, even including the first week of the Covid shutdown, so readers across our five publications have never been (at least for us) this engaged in the news," EIC Frank Konkel said. It makes sense: Reporters who know the difference between OMB and OPM are in demand right now.
>> Pull quote: Ballard Brown said "you just have to remember that the goal is to wear us down — so don't get worn down." Read Reilly's full story here...
|
Trump and Musk's actions have "triggered a torrent of press leaks, coming from career officials and other personnel appalled by the speed and scale" of the purge. While the White House would like to ID the moles, "there is so much leaking going on currently that doing so would likely be a mammoth task," Rolling Stone's Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez point out. CNN's latest stories about USAID, the FBI, and the CIA all rely in part on anonymous sources...
|
Why the "sledgehammer" instead of the scalpel? "I think it's just laziness," CNN's Abby Phillip said on NewsNight. "Hey, it's easy, and you get the headlines you're looking for." And, Josh Rogin added, the sledgehammer approach is "harder to combat because it's so crazy and so fast and so illegal." |
|
|
Breitbart says Trump is "flooding the zone with swift action that is overwhelming the establishment media, which appears unable, ill-equipped, or too lazy to report the flurry of activity." The site says "opinionists" (is that a word?) have "begun whining about their newsrooms’ inability to keep up with the increased flow" of news.
|
I think something significant is happening in left-leaning media circles. Readers who are alarmed by Trump's actions – and don't feel like legacy media outlets are equally alarmed – are turning to bloggers, Substack writers, YouTubers and other independent media figures who freely express fear, outrage and resistance.
Marisa Kabas, author of The Handbasket, expressed this on Bluesky: "It's hard not to feel disillusioned when reporting all the flagrantly illegal and terrifying things this government is doing somehow doesn't fully break through to the mainstream. It feels like cable news and corporate media made a deal to convince people to keep calm and carry on."
I have a different interpretation of what's going on. This famous GIF sums it up:
|
The juggling act is nonstop and not really satisfying for anyone. But that's what traditional newspapers and newscasts do: They juggle!
It is any wonder that some plugged-in news consumers would prefer a different act?
|
|
|
It's a head-spinning morning," Kasie Hunt said on CNN a little while ago "Two weeks and two days after taking office, President Donald Trump is almost casually upending decades of American diplomacy in the Middle East" with his talk of taking over the Gaza Strip.
The journalistic challenge, as Hunt said, is to "state exactly how enormous this potential policy shift would be." She said "the question a lot of people across the world are now asking is, 'is this real?'" Analyst Mark Preston said yes, it's real to Trump: "When you're a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When you're a reality television real estate developer, every problem is a resort to be built."
|
How Fox is framing the Gaza proposal |
Last night a few folks asked me how Fox was dealing with Trump's Gaza proposal. The answer: A mix of "LOL," "let him cook" and "cry more, libs."
That was "perhaps one of the most consequential presidential news conferences in decades," Fox's Laura Ingraham said as Trump's statements started to sink in. An hour later, Jesse Watters cracked jokes – "Gaza is getting a Trump Tower" – but also complimented Trump for attempting a new approach in the Middle East. Then Watters' guest talked about "oceanfront property on the MAGA Strip, maybe Mar-a-Lago on the bay." At 9, Sean Hannity said Trump was "negotiating" out loud and "sending a loud message to the entire Arab world."
And as always on Fox, the real adversary was any member of the media who dared to scrutinize Trump: "MEDIA FREAKS OUT OVER TRUMP'S GAZA GRAB" was one of the banners on Watters' show. |
|
|
Political media notes and quotes |
>> FCC chair Brendan Carr "has opened an investigation into a radio station backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros that broadcasted live locations of undercover Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents." (Fox)
>> Oliver Darcy says Carr "has curiously spared one major media organization from his wrath: Rupert Murdoch's Fox Corporation." (Status)
>> Jameel Jaffer's message to CBS: A settlement "weakens the democratic freedoms on which these media organizations depend." (NYT)
>> Jon Allsop looks at "what the aid funding freeze means for independent journalism around the world." (CJR)
>> Neil Jacobs, the "former NOAA chief involved in 'Sharpiegate,'" has been nominated to take charge of the agency again. (NYT)
|
|
|
Journalists 'ensure the past isn't rewritten' |
"The president's blanket pardons for January 6 didn't just free the charged and convicted. They effectively rewrote the past in real time, a direct assault on the historical record," writes Nate Gowdy, a photojournalist who captured the January 6 attack.
But "I know what I saw," Gowdy writes in this CJR essay. "My photographs document a moment when democracy teetered." Now, "as newsrooms contract and misinformation swells, independent journalists stand at the breach—not just to preserve truths that others reject, but to ensure the past isn't rewritten to fit the present. The pardons don't just forgive, they endorse, transforming accountability into proof of persecution. Without our work, this chapter, too, will be lacquered in sepia and sold as heritage."
|
|
|
THIS MORNING'S EARNINGS REPORTS |
NYT keeps adding and adding |
"The New York Times Company added 350,000 digital-only subscribers in the last quarter, the company said Wednesday, pushing the total subscriber count to more than 11.4 million," Katie Robertson reports. "The new subscribers helped increase overall revenue to $726.6 million in the last three months of 2024, up 7.5 percent from a year earlier."
|
Streaming gains at Disney |
Bob Iger is holding Disney's quarterly earnings call right now. "Streaming gains and a strong box office showing by 'Moana 2' bolstered Disney's performance in the final three months of last year, signs that its turnaround strategy is bearing fruit," the WSJ's Isabella Simonetti writes. |
|
|
>> Fox Corp said yesterday that it is working on plans for a streaming service that "will be priced 'relatively low' and target viewers who do not pay for traditional TV." (TheWrap)
>> "YouTube ad revenue provided a bright spot in an otherwise mixed quarter for Google parent Alphabet," Dade Hayes notes. (Deadline)
>> Chris Anderson, who has overseen TED for 25 years, says he is ready to step down. "Anderson wants someone with the cash to take TED to a new level," Steven Levy reports. (WIRED)
>> "Kay Burley, one of the UK's best-known news anchors, is retiring from Sky News after 36 years." (Deadline)
>> Jay Shaylor is NPR's new executive producer of "Morning Edition" and "Up First." (NPR)
>> "Joe Shields, most recently president of The Hollywood Reporter, has left the publication after two years," Rick Ellis reports. (TooMuchTV)
>> Reuters says it is "launching a new Arabic website catered to readers in the Gulf." (Axios)
|
|
|
>> Kate Conger describes how Musk is using X to "debate, shame and bludgeon anyone who stands in his way." (NYT)
>> "More than 160 Jewish leaders, including dozens of rabbis and mostly left-leaning activists, are making a fresh push for advertisers and app stores to drop Elon Musk’s X over concerns of antisemitism," Will Oremus reports. (Wash Post)
>> Zeynep Tufekci is out with a provocative new piece this morning titled "the dangerous A.I. nonsense that Trump and Biden fell for." (NYT)
>> What a mess for librarians: "Low quality books that appear to be AI generated are making their way into public libraries via their digital catalogs," Emanuel Maiberg writes. (404 Media)
|
|
|
Elizabeth Wagmeister writes: The 67th Grammy Awards brought in 15.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen. That # is down from last year’s nearly 17 million viewers who tuned into the Grammy Awards, but the telecast ranks as the second-highest rated Grammys since 2020 when viewership sank during the pandemic.
CBS says it was "the most social television program" ever with 102.2 million social media interactions – according to a source, that's more social media engagement than the 2024 Super Bowl and the presidential debates.
>> Far more important than any rating metric, the most meaningful numbers are the funds raised at this year’s Grammys for LA fire relief: $9 million was raised during Sunday night’s telecast with a total of $24 million raised throughout the weekend at the Recording Academy and MusiCares' Grammys events.
|
|
|
>> Amber Ruffin will headline this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner. (THR)
>> A massive takedown request: "Music publishers are asking Spotify to remove thousands of unlicensed songs from podcasts on its platform..." (WSJ)
>> Broadway continued to claw its way back from Covid losses last season, according to The Broadway League's annual report. (Deadline)
>> The success of "Dog Man" has Scott Mendelson asking: "Why are theaters still being starved of wholly animated family movies?" (Puck)
|
|
|
|
® © 2025 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved.
1050 Techwood Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30318 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
