Forward

EXEC SUMMARY: There's not a single dominant story right now, but there are a dozen media world stories that you should know about. Scroll down for details about James Murdoch's new investments, Nancy Gibbs' new role, Netflix's Q1 earnings, and much more...

Trump to Fox: What are "we" doing?

Oliver Darcy writes: Trump raised eyebrows on Tuesday morning when he tweeted another complaint about Fox's news division. "So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews," he wrote. "Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the 'audience' was so smiley and nice. Very strange, and now we have @donnabrazile?"

Notice the "we?" Journalists were quick to point that Trump was suggesting that he and Fox are the same entity. Talk about a Freudian slip...

Bret Baier's response

The Fox anchor tweeted: "Thanks for watching Mr. President — we'd love to have you on a town hall soon — or even an interview on @SpecialReport —it's been awhile. We cover all sides."

As Politico Playbook noted, Baier has been seeking an interview with Trump for years... The president's interviews on Fox are "almost always with friendly commentators like Sean Hannity or Jeanine Pirro."

Trump's criticism continued on Tuesday night: He claimed that "many Trump fans & signs" were outside the town hall, and there were "big complaints about not being let in -- stuffed with Bernie supporters. What's with @FoxNews?"

According to the local paper, however, "Fox reached out to various political and local groups in the area and mined requests to attend after it publicly announced the event." Trump supporters were in the audience.

All of this just shows how Fox's viewer-in-chief reacts -- angrily -- when the network makes space for critical voices.

Meanwhile, WaPo's Philip Bump wrote about how "fleeting" the Sanders moment was -- Sean Hannity and many, many others criticized Sanders after the town hall ended...

Other Dems are open to Fox

As The Daily Beast's Scott Bixby wrote, "Sanders' successful appearance last night may have cracked the wall in candidates' opposition to appearances on the network."

Fox is certainly pointing to the ratings to persuade other 2020 contenders. Bernie drew 2.55 million total viewers, making it the "top-rated such event in the 2020 election so far," Mediaite wrote. For comparisons' sake, the same time slot averaged 1.88 million viewers the previous Monday.

So, with all that in mind, Pete Buttgieg might be the next Dem to participate. On Tuesday, his campaign confirmed that it is in talks with Fox about a town hall. Oliver Darcy has the details here. Campaign spokesperson Lis Smith said last month on "Reliable" that the South Bend mayor's media strategy is "talking to everyone..."

--> Per the Beast's Gideon Resnick, three other candidates -- Eric Swalwell, Tim Ryan, and Julián Castro -- are also interested in the Fox town hall format...

--> CNN's next town hall event has five candidates back to back next Monday night...

Lowry's take

Brian Lowry writes: In the last few days both Bill Hemmer and Bret Baier have chafed at on-air criticism of Fox News from Tom Perez and Bernie Sanders, respectively. But it's self-serving at best -- and a little disingenuous -- for those anchors to downplay the concerns expressed about Fox News as an organization or its primetime hosts. If Fox is serious about hosting Democrats through the election cycle, its anchors are going to have be a bit less snowflake-y about such criticism...

James Murdoch is doing WHAT!?

"What's Next for James Murdoch?" THR asked on Monday. The story had lots of answers... And even more came out on Tuesday. With his brother Lachlan Murdoch running FOX, James is doing his own thing...

The WSJ's Ben Mullin wrote Tuesday about Murdoch's plans to invest in a comic book publisher called Artists, Writers and Artisans. "The value of storytelling is only going up, and AWA is uniquely positioned to create a tremendous platform for writers and artists," Murdoch said.

Then, later in the day, a team at the FT dangled this info: Murdoch's "new portfolio" of media companies "could include a liberal-leaning news outlet." The paper, citing "people with direct knowledge of his plans," said Murdoch "wanted to distance himself from the conservative media outlets controlled for decades by his father but had yet to decide how exactly he would invest in the news media. His options range from a liberal news website to a digital magazine focused on culture, society and lifestyle."

Murdoch lieutenant says NYT story was a 'rancid hatchet job'

Murdochland was quiet when the NYT published its three-part investigation of "Planet Fox" two weeks ago. But one of Rupert's top execs, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, has something to say. In a Tuesday evening speech, he "dismissed the NYT's investigation as a 'rancid hatchet job' that was 'distant from the truth,'" according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Thomson called it "multi-generational muck-spreading in which the facts were incidental, if not accidental, and the journalistic jaundice and corporate self-interest were fundamental." Hmmm, which facts? I don't see any corrections on the story!

WEDNESDAY PLANNER

-- The TIME 100 list will be out at 7 a.m... EIC Edward Felsenthal will be on "CBS This Morning" to share it...

-- The WGA is holding a presser about its action against talent agencies... Scroll down for details...

Notre Dame, the day after

Wednesday's cover of Libération shows the charred inside of the cathedral. Despite all the damage, the fire is out; "it's amazing that so much was spared;" and "all of Paris is united in the effort to rebuild," Chris Cuomo said on "Prime Time." A few notes:

-- "The most egregious examples of misinformation" about the fire -- attempting to blame "racial or religious minorities for the outbreak" -- originated "in the darker corners of the internet, but many found bigger audiences on social media," CNN's Gianluca Mezzofiore wrote Tuesday...

-- Charlie Warzel made this point about the crazy conspiracy theories: "The first rule of this internet hellscape is that everything is mined in support of the broader narrative. Doesn't really matter what's happening...it's all just ammunition for the info war."

-- Donie O'Sullivan's latest: YouTube's algorithmic suggestion that the fire was linked to the 9/11 attacks shows, once again, that tech companies have a major "live" problem...

-- Per Taylor Nicole Rogers, "Victor Hugo's 'The Hunchback of Notre-Dame' has become the best-selling book on Amazon France..."

The long wait...

This week is one awfully long "stand by for news" until the redacted Robert Mueller report is released on Thursday morning... All the major TV networks have made plans for special coverage...

-- Here is Joe Pompeo's look at journalists handicapping "Mueller's moment of truth..." (VF)

-- Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins' latest: "Trump anticipates Mueller's vindication but aides fret about his temper..." (CNN)

Twenty years since the Columbine school shooting...

A credible threat was lodged against Columbine High School and other schools in the area on Tuesday, days ahead of the 20-year anniversary of the Columbine school shooting. It is yet another demonstration of how the country has changed since then.

On Wednesday, CNN's Brooke Baldwin will be sharing a special segment that brings survivors from Columbine and Parkland together.

Wayne Drash is authoring the companion story for CNN.com -- a continuation of "The Loneliest Club." Baldwin told me: "The idea was to have bookends of two terrible tragedies in our nation's history. What have we learned, what's changed."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- Twitter chief Jack Dorsey's "mea culpa tour" continued at TED 2019... Emily Dreyfuss has an excellent recap of his vague comments here... (WIRED)

-- Dreyfuss tweeted later: "It's hard for me to express how frustrating it was to watch @Jack's talk at TED today. I was frustrated, the audience was frustrated, he was frustrated, the people he was talking to were frustrated. It was a whole frustrating thing!" (Twitter)

-- Via Claire Atkinson: "After decades of HBO sponsorship, looks like Netflix is taking over Bryant Park movie night." With HBO moving from Bryant Park to Hudson Yards, this makes sense... (Twitter)

Netflix's growth story

What did we learn from Netflix's Q1 earnings on Tuesday? That the company "is on the brink of 150 million subscribers," Frank Pallotta wrote. "The streaming company added a record 9.6 million new subscribers... Netflix now has 148.8 million subscribers globally..." Oh, and "it expects to add another 5 million subscribers in the next quarter..."

BUT: "The company's stock was slightly down in after hours trading Thursday following the report. The drop is likely due to weak guidance for the next quarter as its subscriber growth slows and as its pricing increases. But the company's record numbers this quarter show just how much of a global powerhouse it is, and what competitors like Disney and Apple are up against..."

Five takeaways

>> The WSJ's headline sums it all up: "Netflix Subscriber Count Rises, but Growth Slows at Home..."

>> Peter Kafka's analysis: "It is getting increasingly harder for the company to grow domestically," but it is "still growing very fast outside the US..."

>> Matthew Ball's take via Twitter: "Netflix bears are getting particularly vicious lately. Netflix has encountered a lot of supposed threats in the past, from Hulu to Amazon, YouTube, Facebook and 'withheld content.' By the time anyone even starts to compete, Netflix will be at 175-200MM subscribers..."

>> Reuters' Jennifer Saba with a reality check: "Netflix had a market capitalization at Tuesday's close of around $150 billion. That's more than $1,000 per paying subscriber..."

>> Variety's Janko Roettgers: Netflix will "begin to test Top 10 lists of the most popular content across multiple categories in the U.K. this quarter... Part of an effort to become more transparent with the company's audience as well as producers about viewing trends..."

Sprint and T-Mobile merger in trouble?

The WSJ's Thursday afternoon alert: "Justice Department antitrust enforcement staff have told T-Mobile US and Sprint that their planned merger is unlikely to be approved as currently structured, according to people familiar with the matter, casting doubt on the fate of the $26 billion deal."

Sprint shares fell much as 9% after hours on the news. T-Mobile fell about 4%, per CNN's story.

--> T-Mobile CEO John Legere tweeted a carefully worded response. He said the "premise of this story, as summarized in the first paragraph, is simply untrue."

SPEAKING OF WIRELESS COMPANY DEALS...

WH denies Dems' demands for AT&T info

Remember when Reps. Jerry Nadler and David Cicilline asked the White House for records of Trump admin communications about the AT&T deal to buy CNN's parent company? They are trying to examine whether the president meddled in the merger review process. But the W.H. is "turning down the request," CNN's Manu Raju reports. The ball is back in the Democratic court on this one...

What Trump's FB ads are all about

"The Trump campaign is spending nearly half (44%) of its Facebook ad budget to target users who are over 65 years old," Axios's Sara Fischer reported, citing data from Bully Pulpit Interactive.

Key point: "The President is using most of those ads targeted towards older people to talk about immigration... So far Democrats have not responded in kind on the topic of immigration...

What the 'omissions in Assange case' mean

Katelyn Polantz's latest: "Julian Assange faced a single criminal charge when he was pulled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London last week -- but, according to a CNN review of court records, prosecutors have already given a roadmap about how they may be continuing to investigate WikiLeaks and suggested that more charges are to come." Get all the details here...

The Pentagon press blackout

Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis has an important new column up on TIME.com: "Apparently taking the lead from the White House, the Pentagon has gone more than 300 days since the last time an official spokesperson stood up and gave an on-camera briefing to the press. This is a critical failure by the Department of Defense, which should be able and willing to explain to taxpayers what they are doing with the nearly $700 billion that they are entrusted with each year." Read on...

>> Flashback: Last month CNN's Barbara Starr told me that Pentagon officials are reluctant to speak because "they're concerned about getting crosswise with the president..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- "How to Cover 2020: Assume Nothing and Beware of Twitter." These are Michael Grynbaum's takeaways from last week's conference of political journalists... (NYT)

-- Final ratings for the Masters are in: "Tiger Woods spins a wild TV ratings story..." (Ad Age)

-- Joshua Benton's latest: "What will journalism do with 5G's speed and capacity? Here are some ideas, from The New York Times and elsewhere..." (NiemanLab)

Nancy Gibbs taking charge of the Shorenstein Center

Tuesday night's announcement from Cambridge: Former TIME editor Nancy Gibbs is the new faculty director of the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Nicco Mele, who's been the faculty director for the past three years, is stepping down, effective immediately. Dean Douglas W. Elmendorf wrote to colleagues: "Nicco will remain a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School this fall and intends to focus on multiple book projects."

Vox's "secret ER fees" project is having an impact...

The story: "Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital announced Tuesday it has overhauled its billing policies."

The story behind the story: "This all happened after our ER billing project revealed their aggressive tactics in January," Vox's Sarah Kliff explained. She has been collecting hospital bills for a year-long project focused on American health care prices. "Zuckerberg San Francisco General has the most surprising billing practices I've seen," she wrote in the expose that evidently provoked Tuesday's announcement...

"Dying in the shadow of a national tragedy"

Twelve years ago Tuesday, a student shot and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. The memories of that day are seared in my brain. But that wasn't the day's only tragedy in Virginia. A Prince William County firefighter named Kyle R. Wilson "stepped into a burning house to make sure no one remained inside." He didn't make it out alive.

WaPo's Theresa Vargas covered the deadly fire that morning. But then she turned her attention to Virginia Tech like so many other journalists. So she recently decided to visit Wilson's family and ask what it's like to "share such a personal loss with such a public tragedy." The result is this touching column for the Post...

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- "HuffPost has launched a tiered membership program called HuffPost Plus, asking readers to support the media company's journalism and get exclusive access to newsletters and other content..." (MediaPost)

-- Heading a little bit in the other direction, the subscription-based site The Information "may experiment with ads this year," Lucia Moses reports... Of course, what the two sites have in common is a strategy to diversify their revenue streams... (BI)

-- The Sirius purchase of Pandora took effect in February, and now the integration is underway: "Nearly two dozen of SiriusXM's talk shows come to Pandora as podcasts..." (TechCrunch)

-- "There's Comic-Con, Wondercon, Vidcon and now we have Realitycon." MTV is starting a reality show conference in summer 2020, with a "soft launch later this fall..." (Deadline)

First trailer for "The Loudest Voice"

The teaser trailer for Showtime's drama about Fox and Roger Ailes is up on YouTube... And if you missed last week's behind the scenes story by THR's Lacey Rose, read it here...

NYT criticized for calling mom

Mediaite's Joe DePaolo writes: "Former Hillary Clinton campaign staffers and others are furious with The New York Times for publishing a piece in which the mother of ex-Clinton adviser Neera Tanden was quoted in a piece against her wishes."

Tanden shared a statement from her mom: "I didn't understand my words would be used in the story."

Adrienne Elrod, one of the many Dems who criticized the NYT, said it was "completely irresponsible" to "call Neera's mother: an apology is owed." Conservative commentator Erick Erickson said he agreed.

Here's Timothy Noah with the counter-argument: "Key principle of profile-writing: Whenever possible, talk to mom. Mothers possess that perfect combination of knowing the subject quite well and being ace blabbermouths. This profile illustrates that truth quite nicely."

The NYT's response

Via a spokeswoman for the paper: "Our story focuses on ideological divisions in the Democratic party and the Center for American Progress, a think tank/political organization with a $60 million combined budget. The story provides an in-depth look at the center's president, Neera Tanden. It includes accurate, on-the-record comments by Maya Tanden, Neera Tanden's mother. Maya Tanden is knowledgeable about Democratic politics and her daughter's career, and has been active in local Democratic politics."

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- Via @NotesForNerds: "On this date in 1962, Walter Cronkite became the anchor of the CBS EVENING NEWS..." (Twitter)

-- Ad Age is out with its annual A-List... Wieden & Kennedy took the top honors for the second straight year... "On the strength of culture-leading campaigns for Nike, KFC, Bud Light and OkCupid and strong revenue growth in its New York office..." (Ad Age)

-- Inside "the apartment of a person with a lot of issues, in the most literal sense:" Rachel Syme takes readers inside Vince Aletti's "obsessive collection of seminal fashion magazines..." (New Yorker)

I bet there would be a bidding war for this book...

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez retained CAA and "took meetings earlier this year about writing a potential book," the Beast's Maxwell Tani and Gideon Resnick reported Tuesday. This would seem like a no-brainer... Publishers would surely be interested... But a source told the Beast that the book project "was ultimately pulled."

Maybe it will be revived. The story notes that "she wouldn't be the only freshman member of Congress with a book out in the near future." Ilhan Omar "announced earlier this year she has a book deal," and sources told the Beast that Dan Crenshaw "sold a book late last year..."

WIRED's cover: "15 Months of Fresh Hell Inside Facebook"

Nicholas Thompson (fresh off his Boston Marathon run!) and Fred Vogelstein are out with a 12,000-word cover story about Facebook -- its self-inflicted wounds, scandals, resignations, and "record profits."

The story details the internal deliberations about FB's treatment of news publishers -- including WIRED -- while those publishers stepped up their scrutiny of the social network. "According to multiple Facebook employees, a handful of executives considered it a small plus, too, that the news industry was feeling a little pain after all its negative coverage." The "pain" being reduced traffic to news websites. Read the whole thing when you have time...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- "Prosecutors plan to seek a sentence of four to 10 months' jail time for actress Felicity Huffman for her role in the college admissions scandal," a law enforcement source told CNN... (CNN)

-- "HBO veteran and current 'Veep' showrunner David Mandel has signed a new three-year overall deal with the cable network." I'm very interested to see what show he makes next... (Variety)

Writers v. agents: WGA holding presser on Wednesday

The war between the Writers Guild and top Hollywood talent agencies has raged for the better part of a week. The guild has scheduled a press conference for Wednesday to "announce the next step in its effort to end the conflicted business practices of talent agencies in Hollywood." CNN's Brian Lowry will be there for our ongoing coverage...

--> Per Variety's Cynthia Littleton and Dave McNary, "the WGA is expected to soon file a lawsuit against the ATA and its members... But a legal process will likely take months to produce any decisions..."

Who's willing to be the "voice of reason" here?

Brian Lowry emails: Variety editor Claudia Eller wrote a column urging someone to come forward and provide a "voice of reason" in the dispute between the Writers Guild of America and talent agencies, a third party/elder statesman who can "tamp down the raw emotions and come up with a rational set of compromises." The problem is it's not clear what a compromise would look like, given how dug in the writers appear to be, and how fundamental the practices they oppose are to the agents' business models...

FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX

By Lisa Respers France:

-- Hoda Kotb has welcomed another daughter! The "Today" co-host adopted a little girl named Hope Catherine Kotb. Big sister Haley Joy was adopted in 2017...

-- A New York legend has been tapped to reopen a legendary New York venue: Jay-Z will officially reopen the iconic Webster Hall on April 26, following completion of a renovation to modernize the historic concert venue...

-- Grammy-nominated singer Bebe Rexha has revealed that she is bipolar...

What's missing from "Bless This Mess"

Brian Lowry emails: "Bless This Mess" is a throwback fish-out-of-water sitcom, about a couple from New York that relocates to a farm in Nebraska. But the absence of any reference to politics in this ABC series underscores how difficult it is to dial TV back to "Green Acres" in the current environment, no matter how appealing that idea might be to broadcast networks pining for the days when they were the only game in town. Read Lowry's full argument here...

'Brangelina' no more

Lisa Respers France writes: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's divorce hasn't been fully settled, but the pair are now legally single. According to court documents obtained by CNN, Jolie and Pitt have been granted a dissolution in status only of their marriage. Atlanta-based divorce attorney Randy Kessler told me the court decision allows Jolie and Pitt to no longer be married, while continuing to work out issues such as custody.

Thank you for reading. Email me anytime! See you tomorrow...