Forward

Exec summary: Scroll down for the first peek at TIME's new cover, plus info about BuzzFeed's podcast cuts, FX's strong September, the THR 100 list in the time of #MeToo, and more...

WaPo and NYT's dueling Russia reporting

WaPo is about to publish a book by Greg Miller titled "The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy." The first excerpt came out on the web Wednesday morning, and it'll be in the print paper this weekend.

But Miller has competition: The NYT has a very similar feature in Thursday's paper. It's an entire special section, actually, titled "The Plot To Subvert An Election." It promises to reveal the Russia story "so far," and it's written by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti.

What's great about both the book and the special section: By zooming way out, it's easier to see the scope of Russia's attack and President Trump's peculiar reaction to it all. The Post's book comes out October 2...

A Friday deadline...

CNN.com's headline right now: "Deadline set for Kavanaugh accuser." Chuck Grassley has set 10 a.m. Friday "as the deadline for Christine Blasey Ford's legal team to respond to his request for her to speak to the committee regarding her sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh." Here's CNN's latest...

Toobin's reality check

Jeffrey Toobin on "AC360:" "If she refuses to testify on Monday, Kavanaugh is getting confirmed... If she DOES testify, then I think all the cards are thrown up in the air. He may well be confirmed anyway. But I think everybody should be clear about what the stakes are, of her decision to come forward or not before the committee. It's up or down."

So many smears...

The NYT's Kevin Roose wrote about the "torrent of misinformation" targeting Ford. He says some viral rumors about Ford have been debunked, "but false claims have continued to spread." Here's his story about some of the lies. To borrow a famous phrase, the tech platforms are still putting on their shoes

SNEAK PEEK

Coming Thursday: The THR 100 list in the time of #MeToo

Oliver Darcy emails: The annual THR 100 is due out on Thursday morning. This year's list reflects the upheaval Hollywood has seen in the past year, as companies merge/consolidate and as the #MeToo movement continues to topple some of the industry's most powerful men. Ronan Farrow will make his debut on the list, and LeBron James is on the cover. I'll have more details in a story for CNN.com at 7 a.m., and the list will be published on THR's website later in the morning...

NYRB editor suddenly departs

Tom Kludt emails: Even when faced with a deafening public uproar last week, New York Review of Books editor Ian Buruma defended his magazine's decision to publish a Jian Ghomeshi essay that sought to "inject nuance" in the #MeToo debate.

The piece was published online last Friday; on Wednesday, we learned that Buruma is no longer at the magazine. Whether he was fired or forced to resign is unknown, but it's virtually impossible not to connect his exit to Ghomeshi's essay, and his subsequent interview with Slate's Isaac Chotiner. Details here...

>> Erik Wemple's take: "First-person pieces, it turns out, often require more editing, more supervision than conventionally reported pieces. Don't hand over your publication's keys to your essayist. That's what Medium is for..."

FIRST LOOK

TIME's cover this week: "What's changed"

This is a clever cover design by TIME, pairing Molly Ball's story about the Kavanaugh case with Eliana Dockterman's story about #MeToo "one year later." Dockterman went back to some of the "Silence Breakers" featured on Time's Person of the Year cover story last year. Time also has the first interview with Chloe Dykstra in the wake of her essay alleging abuse by Chris Hardwick. The features will come out on Thursday morning...

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- This week on the "Reliable Sources" podcast: WHCA president Olivier Knox. Have a question for him? Email me...

-- Wednesday's "Big Brother" intro: "Good evening, I'm Julie Chen Moonves. Welcome to Big Brother..." (Us)

-- Here's Kara Swisher's column inspired by Marc Benioff's takeover of Time mag... (NYT)

-- Peter Kafka hears that Ian Osborne, "a British consultant and investor," is working with a group of other investors to buy Fortune mag... Alan Murray says "Meredith is in talks with multiple bidders for Fortune and that he doesn't think a deal will go through until the end of the year..." (Recode)

-- CNN's Chris Cuomo is adding a two-hour radio show to his portfolio... Noon til 2 p.m. on SiriusXM... (AP)

BuzzFeed cuts podcast team

Oliver Darcy emails: BuzzFeed News VP Shani Hilton announced on Wednesday in an internal memo that the company is cutting its in-house podcast production team, resulting in the layoffs of several staffers. "We've decided to move to a production model that is more like our TV projects -- that is, treating shows as individual projects, with teams brought on as needed," Hilton wrote. WSJ's Ben Mullin had the scoop here...

"I don't think I've ever seen the news team this collectively sad and upset"

More from Darcy: The response internally from employees has not been the best. Hilton's memo sparked a reply-all email chain in which BuzzFeeders are expressing their disappointment. "What a huge loss this is for BuzzFeed. I am devastated, disappointed, despondent," wrote one person. Another person wrote, "I don't think I've ever seen the news team this collectively sad and upset, which speaks so clearly to how everyone feels." I'm told that BuzzFeed News EIC Ben Smith will address the matter internally on Thursday...

The state of the podcast biz is...?

I keep hearing media execs express doubts about the sustainability of the podcast ecosystem. Numerous media companies are looking at pods and wondering, in essence, where's the $$$?

But Hot Pod founder Nicholas Quah, a must-read on this subject, noted on Twitter that Panoply just doubled down on podcast tech, Jacob Weisberg just announced a new audio content venture, iHeartMedia just bought a pod maker, and Endeavor just started an audio division. So we'll see... Or rather, we'll hear...

"Serial" returns on Thursday

Julia Waldow emails: The first two episodes of season three of "Serial" drop Thursday. The next saga focuses on the criminal justice system in Cleveland...

>> Related: "Serial helped spark an explosion of true crime stories. Will its new season be heard above the noise?" (WashPost)

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

By Julia Waldow:

-- The NYT was granted access to Facebook's election "war room..." (NYT)

-- LAT owner Patrick Soon-Shiong is a new investor in Daybreak Game Company. His move into gaming and esports is part of what he believes "is the next phase of the newspaper business..." (WashPost)

-- From USA Today to the NYT, media outlets are developing tools that tailor ads to people's moods... (Digiday)

"Inside the Brilliant Career and Tragic Death of Javier Valdez"

An Phung emails: Ioan Grillo's Esquire profile about his friend Javier Valdez, a Mexican journalist who reported on drug cartels before he was gunned down last year in Culiacán, really struck a nerve with me in light of the public's fake news accusations against the press. Valdez didn't die reporting in a war zone like Afghanistan or Syria. He was killed 600 miles south off the US-Mexico border. What he endured as a reporter was very real. Nothing fake about it.

"Fear" is #1 on the NYT list...

...As expected. The best sellers list officially came out on Wednesday. The real question is how long it will stay on top. The book's publisher, Simon & Schuster, expects "Fear" to have staying power because it's one of the top selling books in the company's history. S&S has been working overtime to keep up with demand. Some customers have complained about having to wait weeks for a copy of the hardcover edition. But the backlog has dissipated in recent days. Here's my full story...

"Fire" is still the year's top seller

"Fear" sold upwards of 1.1 million copies in its first week. That makes it the top-selling nonfiction book of the year -- save for "Fire and Fury." Since January, Michael Wolff's book has sold 2.8 million copies across all formats, according to Macmillan. Wolff is heads down right now, doing no interviews, invisible on Twitter, working on his next book... No details yet...

"Believe it or not, I'm really not a conspiratorial person."

--President Trump, one of the world's foremost promoters of conspiracy theories, in an interview with Hill.TV...

Major Garrett's Trump book

"Mr. Trump's Wild Ride" is the title of Major Garrett's book, which came out on Tuesday. The CBS correspondent says that "if we had paid closer attention to Trump" in the first weeks of his campaign in 2015, "we would have understood the campaign better and been less surprised. And we would have had a leg up in comprehending the chaotic maelstrom that became his first year as president..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

By Daniella Emanuel:

-- Michael Petrou writes about Walter Lippmann's legacy, and the questions it has left for journalists. For instance, "Should journalists be insiders?" (The Atlantic)

-- Monika Bauerlein's latest: "It's Time for Journalism to Stand for Something..." (Mother Jones)

-- "The Kelly Clarkson Show," hosted by, well, Kelly Clarkson, is set to launch next fall. It will have a prime time slot on NBC stations, replacing the Steve Harvey talker...(Deadline)

-- "Who is going to supply all the other people?" Bob Bakish said Tuesday. "Viacom is very well-positioned to do that as a truly global, multiplatform content company... There aren't that many people that can step in – and Viacom is certainly one [that can]..." (Variety)

-- Former ESPN host Jemele Hill will narrate LeBron James' documentary "Shut Up and Dribble..." (THR)

"R.I.P. The Celebrity Profile"

There's something very real about what Jon Caramanica is saying in this critic's notebook for the NYT. In-depth interviews with A-list celebrities ARE becoming more rare. Social media outlets are changing the form. Sources are going direct.

Caramanica says celebrity journalism "aims to add context and depth to the fame economy." But Taylor Swift, to name one, hasn't given a substantive interview and access to a print publication for at least two years." He says that the replacement for the celeb profile isn't satisfying: "Either outright silence, or more often, unidirectional narratives offered through social media. Monologue, not dialogue. It threatens to upend the role of the celebrity press."

But there's been some valuable push-back to his piece too. The WSJ's Jason Gay, an occasional celeb profiler, tweeted that this "smoking hot take is inaccurate. The environment and options have changed but good stuff happens all the time. You'd think they'd know at the Times, where they have two of the very best" in Taffy Brodesser-Akner and Caity Weaver...

FX's strong September

Brian Lowry emails: The new TV season doesn't officially begin till next week, but FX is already off to a strong September, with "American Horror Story: Apocalypse" totaling 7.8 million viewers across the network and non-linear platforms. That follows a solid start for "Mayans M.C.," the "Sons of Anarchy" spinoff, which scored the biggest audience this year for any new cable drama. The network also nabbed five Emmys on Monday, including outstanding limited series ("The Assassination of Gianni Versace") and a pair of awards for the final season of "The Americans..."

A+ profile of Chevy Chase

This was the best thing I read on Wednesday: Geoff Edgers' WaPo profile of Chevy Chase. It is subtitled "The 74-year-old comedy star is sober and ready to work. The problem? Nobody wants to work with him."

Check it out here... Right now this is the #1 most read story on the WaPo website...

Lowry reviews "Love, Gilda"

Brian Lowry emails: CNN Films' latest documentary, "Love, Gilda," is an ode to a gone-too-soon comedy icon — original "SNL" star Gilda Radner. Like HBO's recent Garry Shandling and Robin Williams projects, the film draws upon Radner's diaries and videos to provide an especially intimate portrait. It opens in theaters on Friday, with a TV debut to follow...

"Seau" streaming on ESPN+

Another one from Lowry: In other documentaries, ESPN's "30 for 30" premieres its latest, "Seau," Thursday on its streaming service ESPN+. The film is a stark look at former NFL great Junior Seau, who committed suicide in 2012, at the age of 43, due to the effects of a degenerative brain disease. It's one of those sobering productions that makes even football fans wince when watching the sort of crushing hits that Seau is shown delivering, and receiving, during his football career...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

By Lisa Respers France:

-- Prince fans have filed a petition seeking a federal grand jury probe into his death...

-- Jessica Simpson and hubby Eric Johnson are expecting baby No. 3, a girl...

-- According to Tyra Banks, Lindsay Lohan will appear in the "Life-Size" sequel -- some type of way...

-- Jennifer Garner taking beauty tips from Reese Witherspoon is just what you need today...

Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback. See you tomorrow...