We're almost there! I can see the end of 2018 on the horizon. This is our final newsletter of the year -- we will be back on January 1. Thank you for all the feedback, links, critiques, corrections, and tips. Before we go, here's a weekend's worth of media news!
REVIEWING 2018
What we learned this year
Every corner of the media industry was touched by 2018's frenetic pace of change. The streaming wars escalated. So did a very different kind of war: President Trump's assault on news outlets he doesn't like. Meantime, a wave of media consolidation continued to build, and all sorts of websites explored new subscription-based business models.
And through the news media, we all learned names like Christine Blasey Ford, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stormy Daniels, and Karen McDougal. Think about it -- you probably had not heard of any of them last December. Here's my full year-in-review story for CNN.com...
Our top 8 list
What were the eight biggest media stories of the year? Eight people could come up with eight different answers, but here are ours... hat tip to producer Laurie Frankel for shepherding this list...
-- The Trump book club, a boon to the publishing biz
-- The #MeToo movement upends CBS
-- High-profile falls from grace: Roseanne Barr and Megyn Kelly
-- The murder of Jamal Khashoggi
-- The shooting spree at the Capital Gazette
-- Social media reckoning for Facebook, Twitter, Google
-- Fox News-Trump White House merger
-- Trump's war on the press gets real
Our segment will be airing on CNN this week... here's the video...
NiemanLab's predictions for journalism 2019!
This is one of my favorite things about December: NiemanLab's collection of predictions about the year ahead from some of the news industry's best and brightest. Don't miss it!
Reflections from our media reporters
Our year-in-review podcast comes in two parts. Part one is up now -- with Hadas Gold, Oliver Darcy and Tom Kludt discussing the year in media and its intersections with politics, business and tech. Part two -- with Chloe Melas, Frank Pallotta and Jill Disis -- will be up later this week. Listen to the pod via Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, or your preferred app...
Holiday book delays
"This year has been, much to everyone's surprise, a blockbuster for the publishing industry," the NYT's Alexandra Alter writes... This should be good news, but it has "created headaches during the crucial holiday sales season, as printing presses struggle to keep up with a surge in demand, creating a backlog that has led to stock shortages of popular titles." Details here...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- The AP's annual survey of US editors is out. The editors selected the Parkland school shooting as the biggest news story of the year... (AP)
-- Jim Rutenberg turned green for this year-end column about Media Grinches... (NYT)
-- New and haunting details in this Post story: "Jamal Khashoggi's final months as an exile in the long shadow of Saudi Arabia" (WaPo)
The shutdown continues...
Will it last through the New Year? Sure seems that way. In the meantime, can we insist on a fact-based debate about the budget and the demand for a border wall?
This topic was our lead on Sunday's "Reliable Sources." Vox's Dara Lind, whose beat is immigration, described the nuances that are missing from some news coverage about the border. And WaPo's Karen Tumulty said "there IS a crisis at the border," but not the kind described by the president. Instead, it is a "humanitarian crisis." Watch here...
As seen on TV...
This is an awfully chaotic end to year two of the as-seen-on-TV presidency. | | Yes, the as-seen-on-TV presidency. That's what my latest CNN.com column is about. Trump used to like what he saw when he tuned in. The medium advertised him as a billionaire on "The Apprentice" and helped him connect with the millions of Americans now known as his "base." Still today, he uses "Fox & Friends" as a daily briefing and hires people he sees on TV. But nowadays he sometimes gets angry when he channel surfs. He vents on Twitter and sometimes takes specific actions as a result. Case in point...
Trump pushes Mattis out right away
On Sunday Trump moved up Defense Secretary James Mattis' departure by two months because he was mad about the news coverage of Mattis's resignation, according to reporting by CNN's Barbara Starr and others.
Behind the scenes
The Trump/Mattis news broke during Sunday's "Reliable." I saw alerts from the AP and the NYT. Trump tweeted confirmation during our last commercial break, so we scrapped the remainder of the show for breaking news coverage. Shoutout to CNN correspondent Ryan Nobles who was ready to go instantly at the White House!
Bernstein on Mattis' resignation | | "What the Mattis letter has done, in a monumental way, is to push Republicans into making some real judgments," Carl Bernstein told me on Sunday's show. He said some of those Republicans have privately concluded that President Trump is "unfit." Bernstein said journalists need to be questioning GOP lawmakers about this subject...
What will Mattis say publicly, if anything?
The aforementioned Karen Tumulty tweeted: "Hope Mattis uses this extra two months to start writing his book..."
Big picture thought from Josh Dawsey's feed: "Trump leaves on rocky terms with many aides and then expresses surprise and frustration when damaging or embarrassing stories come out about him in the media — either on the record or anonymously..."
Trump watching even more TV these days?
That's what Maggie Haberman and Peter Baker reported in Sunday's NYT: His cable TV consumption "has actually increased in recent months." Key graf: Trump is spending "ever more time in front of a television, often retreating to his residence out of concern that he is being watched too closely..."
Right-wing personalities keeping up the pressure
Jeanine Pirro used her Fox show to speak directly to the president on Saturday night. Her message was all about the border wall battle. "Mr. President," she said. "I understand the pressure that you are under from every side, but the wall at our southern border is a promise that you made, ran on, got elected on and must keep..."
She concluded the monologue by "pleading" (her word) to "get it done," meaning, get the wall funding. "This is your moment, just do it," she said...
Pirro is a member of the cable news cabinet | | WaPo reporter Sarah Ellison on Sunday's "Reliable:" Trump "has his real cabinet, and then he has his shadow cable news cabinet. And he listens sometimes to the people in the cable news cabinet more than the people who are really working with him in the administration. And that was clearly on display this week."
Sunday's chatter
-- Haberman on Twitter: "Several people we spoke with said Trump's tone has gotten 'meaner' - their word - since Hope Hicks left..."
-- Robert Costa tweeted: "A prominent Republican strategist confides, uneasily, today to WashPost: 'Can you imagine if the Democrats were able to convince Mattis to be their VP nominee in '20?'"
-- Trump tweeted out quotes from not one, but two of Jake Tapper's "SOTU" interviews on Sunday. Trump knocked Bob Corker and thanked Rand Paul. Tapper replied to Trump -- who's fond of denying that he watches CNN -- and said thanks for watching...
Lockhart's Q
Clinton-era W.H. press secretary Joe Lockhart tweeted over the weekend: "How is it with everything we already know, and there's a lot we don't know, not a single major editorial page has called on @realDonaldTrump to resign. If this had been any other President I think we would have already seen the call." I've seen a number of other prominent Dems make this point... | |
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- Snap shares hit another all-time low on Friday...
-- Big story over the weekend by Georgia Wells and Maureen Farrell: "Can Evan Spiegel manage Snap out of its troubles?" (WSJ)
More highlights from Sunday's "Sources"
-- BuzzFeed News EIC Ben Smith discussed his site's victory in a closely watched defamation lawsuit over the dossier...
-- Are ad boycotts the best way to protest? I got into that with David Zurawik...
-- This is the segment that was blown out due to breaking news: "Netflix is growing, but so is the box office." Watch the conversation with Brian Lowry and Rebecca Keegan here...
Is 2018's market meltdown over?
Saturday's reports about Trump wanting to sack the Fed chair just raised concerns even higher. But admin officials say he realizes he can't do that.
Here's Sunday's headline from Donna Borak of CNN Business: "Mnuchin speaks with US bank executives to reassure investors after Wall Street whiplash"
But did Sunday evening's Treasury Department statement about "ample liquidity" in the markets really reassure the public?
Seems like "a strange statement. Not sure what they're seeing in markets that suggests a need for this," CNBC's Steve Liesman tweeted, summing up many of the reactions I read. "It's the kind of thing issued in a crisis. Seems as likely to create panic as to calm it."
Der Spiegel fabulist: the fallout
"Der Spiegel has announced that it will press charges against a former star reporter accused of systemically faking interviews and articles," the NYT reports from Hanover, Germany.
The criminal complaint against Claas Relotius will be, at least in part, about a "a private donation drive ostensibly to help two Syrian orphans that he had profiled. According to Der Spiegel, only one of the two orphans exists, and the aid money went to the reporter's private bank account." Relotius still hasn't commented...
Grenell's salt in the wound
Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany and a Trump favorite, is using the scandal to call out the newsmagazine as a whole. The mag has had an anti-Trump bent, to be sure. But Grenell is equating that to an anti-American bias -- a charge the editors reject.
One of Grenell's Sunday tweets: "One reporter was able to publish anti-American propaganda for years without an editor or fact-checker?! It's absurd for them to pretend this is only about one reporter."
| | Weekend's box office winners
"The king of Atlantis won the holiday box office by beating out a Transformer and a magical nanny," Frank Pallotta wrote Sunday. That's quite a lead! I'd see THAT movie...
Details from Frank's story:
-- Warner's "Aquaman" (from the same parent company as CNN) nabbed "a $67.4 million three-day weekend in North America. That gives the undersea hero -- played by Jason Momoa -- the US box office crown for the weekend and adds to the film's already huge global total..."
-- "Mary Poppins Returns" took second place "with a $22.2 million haul. The sequel to the 1964 Disney classic, which stars Emily Blunt as a magical nanny has so far made $51.3 million around the world..."
-- "Bumblebee," the next installment in the "Transformers" franchise, nabbed $21 million in the United States...
Lowry's recs
Brian Lowry emails: My full reviews will be up later this week, but in terms of Christmas-week premieres, I strongly recommend "Stan & Ollie" — a poignant look at the great comedy duo Laurel & Hardy — mixed on the dutiful but stiff "On the Basis of Sex," about Ruth Bader Ginsburg; and thumbs down on "Destroyer," a gritty crime thriller, transparently positioned as a showcase for Nicole Kidman...
Forecast for next weekend
Via Frank's story: "Hollywood will end the year on a high note next weekend with the box office up 7.5% over last year, according to Comscore." Read on...
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