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Good morning! Big back-to-school and back-to-work vibes today, so here's a look at the coming week and the coming season in media as it intersects with politics, business, tech, and culture. Plus: The latest on Vogue, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Kari Lake, Stephen Colbert, and much more...

Coming up this week 📅

Howard Stern returns to his radio show this morning amid speculation about his future at SiriusXM.

Stephen Colbert begins his final "Late Show" season tonight; details below.

China welcomes the world's media attention for its "Victory Day" military parade on Wednesday.

Back in DC, Rep. Ro Khanna promises an "explosive" press conference on Wednesday with ten of Jeffrey Epstein's victims. Khanna says many of them "have never spoken out before."

"The Paper" – a mockumentary set at a struggling Toledo newspaper – launches Thursday on Peacock.

The Eagles open the new NFL season with a game against the Cowboys Thursday on NBC and Peacock.

Later this month...

Apple will roll out new iPhones (and maybe some other upgrades) at its Sept. 9 launch event.

The TikTok ban will almost certainly be delayed again – an action that some legal experts call an "alarming expansion of presidential authority."

"The Studio" and "Severance" are the shows to beat at the Emmy Awards on Sept. 14.

Kamala Harris will be on book tour for "107 Days," out Sept. 23.

"60 Minutes," now under new Paramount management, will return on Sept. 28.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting's federal funding runs out at the end of the month.

Looking further into the fall...

Taylor Swift will launch "The Life of a Showgirl" on Oct. 3. 

"The Smashing Machine," also out Oct. 3, just received a 15-minute-long standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.

After the usual summertime cast changes, "SNL" will return on Oct. 4.

Comcast will put the finishing touches on the Versant spin-off.

Tegna and Nexstar will pursue regulatory approval for their $6.2 billion deal.

CNN will launch its new streaming product.

Easiest prediction of the fall: The "podcast gold rush," as the WSJ just dubbed it, will continue!

For more of what's upcoming, check out The New Yorker's fall culture preview, Goodreads' guide to the fall's new nonfiction books, Paste's fall TV guide, and Gold Derby's list of "20 films with the most Oscar buzz this season."

'A bitter fall looms...'

Stephen Collinson's newest piece for CNN is titled "Trump readies crushing autumn power plays as Democrats search for direction." He says "a bitter fall looms in American politics, as President Donald Trump flexes unchecked power that often tests the Constitution while Democrats grapple for traction with their voters demanding a fight back." Read on...

 >> More: Sarah Ferris and Alison Main preview the "messy fall" for Congress...

Vogue's grand reveal...

...May be moments away. But Puck's Lauren Sherman broke the news on Monday: Anna Wintour has made the "practical, reasonable, rational choice and hired Chloe Malle, who currently runs Vogue.com, as her replacement to run American Vogue's daily operations." Condé Nast is expected to make it official shortly...

Colbert begins his final CBS season

Stephen Colbert returns to the air tonight after a late August break, launching the final season of "The Late Show" with John Oliver as his guest, along with stand-up comedy from Joe Dombrowski. On Thursday NPR CEO Katherine Maher will be one of Colbert's guests – a noteworthy booking given what we noted up above about the federal funding drying up... 

Sanjay's latest book is #1 already

"It Doesn't Have to Hurt: Your Smart Guide to a Pain-Free Life" by Dr. Sanjay Gupta is out today, and it's already the top-ranked nonfiction book on Amazon's new releases list. The CNN chief medical correspondent began his book tour on "CBS Sunday Morning" with Jane Pauley, and you'll see him across CNN this week...

📚 More of today's new releases 

Cable industry pioneer John Malone is launching his memoir, "Born to Be Wired," and speaking his mind about all sorts of things. NYT: "He Paved the Way for CNN, Fox News and the Internet. He's Not Sure We're Better Off." The FT: "Malone held talks with Rupert Murdoch over Warner Bros-Fox merger." Yahoo: "Malone: Big Tech will dominate the future of TV."

Also today, Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker are releasing "The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics;" TLC star Christine Brown Woolley is out with "Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom; Gene Pressman releases "They All Came to Barneys: A Personal History of the World's Greatest Store;" and Ben Shapiro is out with "Lions and Scavengers: The True Story of America (and Her Critics)."

Protesting Israel's killing of journalists in Gaza

Reporters Without Borders and Avaaz have launched a fresh campaign "calling for the protection of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, the emergency evacuation of reporters seeking to leave the territory, an end to impunity for Israeli crimes against Gaza’s reporters and for foreign press to be granted independent access to Gaza."

News outlets in more than 50 countries signed on to support the campaign, including NPR and the Columbia Journalism Review in the US. CNN has more on the protest here.

 >> One of the key messages: "At the rate journalists are being killed in Gaza by the Israeli army, there will soon be no one left to keep you informed."

ICYMI...

 >> "The internet swore Trump was dead — here's how the unbelievable rumor went viral." (The Root)

 >> "He's very much alive," The Daily Caller's Reagan Reese said after interviewing POTUS. Questions (and conspiracy theories) about Trump's health are surely going to linger into the new workweek. He will be on camera with the press pool this afternoon. (CNN)

 >> Veteran correspondent Charles Bierbauer, a staple of CNN in the 1980s and 90s, has died. The network said he will be remembered "for his outstanding journalism and his willingness to help others." (CNN)

 >> Mark Knoller, the CBS White House correspondent and human Wikipedia, has died. He kept "meticulous records of every presidential act, movement, and utterance, single-handedly filling an immense void in American history." (CBS)

 >> Alan Dershowitz lost his bid "to overturn a ruling that dismissed his defamation lawsuit against CNN," and now he intends to "appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court" to test New York Times v. Sullivan. (Reuters)

 >> Today's lead story on Page One of the NYT: "In Blitz on Science, Experts Warn of an Autocratic Tilt." (NYT)

 >> Atlanta will become the "largest U.S. metro without a printed daily newspaper" when the AJC goes all-digital at the end of the year. (AP)

 >> Fox and YouTube reached a distribution deal after narrowly avoiding a blackout. (CNN)

 >> "We haven't had a good media power couple in a while!" Page Six says Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci and NYT White House correspondent Shawn McCreesh are an item. (Page Six)

Here's the latest from VOA

US Agency for Global Media boss Kari Lake went ahead with another attempt to fire most of the remaining staff at Voice of America last week. The union that reps VOA employees "called the layoffs illegal."

The cuts came just 24 hours after a federal judge barred Lake from firing VOA director Michael Abramowitz, as CNN's Liam Reilly reported here. Lake has appealed that decision and asserted that the court lacks the jurisdiction to block the move. Attorneys for Abramowitz have pushed back against Lake's appeal...

Five excellent reads

 >> The "emotional toll of constant negative news and unlimited access to 'doomscrolling' has led to record-high news avoidance," Josie Harvey reported. (The Guardian)

 >> Jessica Testa wrote about how SiriusXM "has quietly become a dominant player in podcasting, rivaling Spotify and Amazon’s Wondery — largely because of its impulse to cater to talent." (NYT)

 >> Tina Reed chronicled the "rise of the MAHA 'mom-fluencers.'" (Axios)

 >> Jacques Steinberg went to Austin to catch up with Dan Rather, who has replaced his old "CBS Evening News" planning meetings with daily huddles about his newsletter. (NYT)

 >> Matt Bai went to the Smithsonian's African American history museum to see if it needs a MAGA editor. His conclusion: "Trying to sanitize the American story is the antithesis of what makes the country exceptional." (WaPo)

Entertainment notes and quotes

 >> Following a Trump pardon, the Chrisley family's new reality show premiered on Lifetime last night. (Deadline)

 >> On Truth Social, Trump promoted this Variety story about Woody Allen telling Bill Maher that Trump was "a pleasure to work with and a very good actor" back when Trump briefly played himself in Allen's 1998 film "Celebrity." Allen quipped that he would like to direct Trump again – so that he could make the decisions and reverse what Trump has done... (Variety)

 >> "There's big crime in D.C. at the White House," Neil Young sings in a "new protest song." (NYT)

 >> "This year’s Labor Day weekend was so sleepy for movie ticket sales that a 50-year-old shark thriller chewed up and spit out most of the competition," Auzinea Bacon writes. "The re-release of Universal Pictures’ 'Jaws,' the Stephen Spielberg classic from 1975, finished second at the box office ($9.9 million) behind Warner Bros. Pictures' 'Weapons' ($12.78 million) for the holiday weekend." (CNN)

 >> Lucas Shaw concludes that the surprise success of "KPop Demon Hunters" this summer "proves an old Hollywood rule: Nobody knows anything." (Bloomberg)

This edition of Reliable Sources was edited by Andrew Kirell and produced with Liam Reilly. Email us your feedback and tips here.