Forward

EXEC SUMMARY: This is a special EARLY EDITION, looking ahead to the #DemDebate. "Slow news day," Jake Tapper quipped: "Beginning the final chapter of impeachment and the final showdown before Iowa..."

#DemDebate night in America

Before the holidays I was speaking with a media big shot who likened 2019's six Democratic debates to "preseason football." The candidates and millions of viewers would beg to differ, but there are definite differences between those debates and the one that's about to take place in Des Moines, Iowa. This is the final face-off before the Iowa caucuses.

In a piece titled "Why tonight's debate could be a doozy," Politico's David Siders writes: "Nearing the end of a presidential primary marked by its lack of acrimony, the four-candidate pileup in Iowa is forcing campaigns to alter their terms of engagement in pursuit of even incremental advantages. The reluctance to brawl is now a vestige of the past. In its place is a spray of bullets in every direction."

The basics

The debate begins at 9pm ET... Live from Drake University... CNN and the Des Moines Register are the sponsors... They are streaming the event on their respective websites, plus all the other places you can find CNN.

The moderators are CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Abby Phillip and the Register's Brianne Pfannenstiel. Here they are in a casual moment on Monday:

The live updates page on CNN.com is up and running... And via Eric Bradner and Dan Merica, here are "9 things to watch" during the debate...

Behind the scenes

Check out this making-of story by The Register's Courtney Crowder... It mentions that "planning for this particular debate — the seventh this cycle — has been a unique challenge for CNN. With a looming impeachment trial, the team had to plan for a Jan. 14 debate, all while marking arrangements with an asterisk in case the trial drew candidates back to Washington and the whole show had to be rescheduled. Only last week was the date 100% locked in, said Sam Feist, CNN's Washington, D.C., bureau chief."

What Jon Favreau found in four focus groups

For the second season of The Wilderness, Jon Favreau's podcast "about how the Democratic Party can win again," he met with four groups of mostly undecided voters in PA, AZ, MI, and FL. He recapped his top takeaways here.

I asked how his findings related to Tuesday's debate, and he said: "Most of the voters I spoke to complained that the Democratic debates were confusing and unhelpful, with too many candidates, too much fighting, and too many specifics that they couldn't understand. I think the best chance for a candidate to really connect is by playing the happy warrior -- avoid getting dragged into small tit-for-tats and focus on the big fights that matter to people at home."

Keep this in mind...

Favreau also spoke with Peter Hamby for this outstanding VF piece about casual voters, or as Hamby says, "low-information voters."

President Trump "stumbled into understanding something crucial about the electorate, which is this: There are plenty of divisions in our conventional wisdom—insider versus outsider, progressive versus moderate, young versus old—but one of the biggest splits in American politics is simply between those who follow politics closely and those who do not," Hamby says.

Favreau echoed that point: "A lot of us in politics are obsessing over some dumb Twitter fight between candidates or fourth-quarter fundraising numbers while most of these voters" in focus groups "couldn't name any Democratic candidates beyond Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders and maybe Elizabeth Warren." A useful reminder that many people are just starting to tune into the 2020 race for the first time, if they're tuning in at all...

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- POTUS is holding a prime time rally in Wisconsin... C-SPAN is planning to show it live...

-- Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo will anchor CNN's post-debate coverage, starting around 11pm ET...

-- Other cablers are also airing special coverage: Brian Williams will be anchoring on MSNBC until 1am ET, and Joy Reid will anchor from 1 until 2am...

-- Notably, Fox News is not doing any extra programming on TV... Just its usual 11pm program... But the Fox Nation streaming service "will offer a post-debate show on the major highlights..."

-- Stephen Colbert will be live after the debate... Michael Bloomberg will be his guest...

Impeachment trial date

The House is expected to name impeachment managers and transmit the articles of impeachment on Wednesday. All signs point to Tuesday, January 21 as being the start of the trial in the Senate. Here is CNN's latest...

"Impeachment trial security crackdown will limit Capitol press access"

Developing story: "The Senate Sergeant-at-Arms and Capitol Police are launching an unprecedented crackdown on the Capitol press corps for the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, following a standoff between the Capitol's chief security officials, Senate Rules Chairman Roy Blunt and the standing committees of correspondents," Roll Call's Katherine Tully-McManus reported Tuesday.

Shortly after her story dropped, LAT reporter Sarah D. Wire, chair of the Standing Committee of Correspondents, weighed in, saying the committee "vigorously objects to restrictions being considered on press access during the upcoming Senate trial." Full Twitter thread here...

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- James and Kathryn Murdoch "are lashing out against his father's sprawling media empire for how it covers the climate crisis, especially in light of the fires raging in the family's native Australia," Hadas Gold reports. Hat tip to the Beast's Lachlan Cartwright for breaking this news... (CNN)

-- Related: Graham Readfearn writes, "The Australian says it accepts climate science, so why does it give a platform to 'outright falsehoods'?" (The Guardian)

-- A fact-check by Ryan Browne and Barbara Starr: "Despite Trump's claims, Saudi Arabia does not appear to have paid $1 billion to house US troops..." (CNN)

-- Jeremy Barr writes: "CNN and MSNBC are shaping up to be the two likeliest landing spots for former Fox News anchor Shepard Smith..." (THR)

"U.S. Considers New System for Releasing Key Economic Reports"

Bloomberg's Katia Dmitrieva and Vince Golle report: "The Trump administration plans to restrict the news media's ability to prepare advance stories on market-moving economic data, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that could create a logjam in accessing figures such as the monthly jobs report..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

By Kerry Flynn:

-- Annette Thomas has been named CEO of Guardian Media Group. She was most recently CEO of the science group at Clarivate Analytics and prior to that spent more than 20 years at Macmillan... (The Guardian)

-- Lisa Hughes has been named CEO of The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is a member of the company's board and previously served as publisher of The New Yorker... (Inquirer)

-- Bob Cohn, previously the president of The Atlantic, has been named president/managing director for The Economist... (Adweek)

-- Google is planning to end support for third-party tracking cookies in Chrome in the next two years... (Digiday)

-- TikTok is considering a curated feed of content to appease advertisers looking for more brand-safe opportunities on the app... (FT)

-- Bloomberg's Mark Bergen is writing a book on YouTube titled "Like, Comment, Subscribe," published by Viking. Release date is TBD... (Axios)

NYT hits 5 million subscriptions mark

Kerry Flynn writes: NYT touted its "significant milestones" in 2019 via a press release and at town meetings on Tuesday. The company reports Q4 earnings next month. A few of the takeaways from CEO Mark Thompson's presentation:

>> NYT "passed its goal of $800 million of annual digital revenue a year ahead of schedule," up from $400 million in 2015.

>> Added more than 1 million net digital subscriptions in 2019.

>> Now has more than 5 million total subscriptions (3.4M core news, 300K cooking, 600K crossword, 900K print).

Fox's example of liberal outrage over Vince Vaughn is a conservative writer who posted sarcastic tweet

Oliver Darcy emails: If you checked in with Fox News on TV or the web Tuesday, you likely saw the conservative media outlet make a big deal out of Vince Vaughn supposedly being "canceled" for chatting with Trump at Monday night's football game. But there was one glaring problem with Fox's coverage: One of the main people it cited as proof of this "cancel culture" was a conservative writer who very sarcastically tweeted that Vaughn was "canceled."

The writer, Siraj Hashmi of the Washington Examiner, joked on Twitter Monday night, "Ladies & gentlemen, I regret to inform you Vince Vaughn is CANCELED." Those who follow Hashmi knew that he was clearly mocking the idea of "cancel culture." Fox, however, apparently thought he was serious. Hashmi's tweet was featured in a digital story with the headline, "Vince Vaughn faces liberal outrage after he was seen with Trump during national championship game." And on TV, hosts Melissa Frances and Harris Faulkner featured his tweet. Faulkner called Hashmi "one of the many outraged critics."

I checked in with a Fox spokesperson to see if the outlet would be issuing an on-air correction. I did not hear back. That said, Fox's online story was quietly edited to note that Hashmi's tweet was in jest. That didn't go over well with Hashmi who tweeted, in part, "You stealth-edit your piece and don't even issue an apology, let alone reach out to me?" Yikes...

FIRST IN RELIABLE:

Heritage says offer to debate Tucker Carlson over "false" accusations has fallen on deaf ears

Oliver Darcy emails: In late December, Tucker Carlson attacked the Heritage Foundation, a top conservative think tank. Carlson declared on his Fox News program that the group "no longer represents the interests of conservatives" on the issue of Big Tech. Carlson said conservative orgs had "colluded with Big Tech to shield left-wing monopolies from any oversight." He accused "so-called conservative nonprofits" of making deals "with people who hate you" and said they "secretly sell out your interests."

The next day, Heritage hit back at Carlson, saying he had "made several false, outrageous, and unfounded accusations" against the group. But weeks later, an op-ed in the Carlson-founded Daily Caller repeated some of Carlson's talking points. Heritage countered by running an op-ed in The Daily Caller which said, "Rather than address our critique ... both Carlson and Cleland accuse Heritage of defending technology companies. That's simply false."

Behind the scenes, members of Heritage have tried to privately reach out to Carlson, the group's VP of communications, Rob Bluey, told me on Tuesday. Carlson had in 2018 received the org's Salvatori Prize and had worked at the nonprofit, so he was no stranger to the organization. But Heritage's attempts to sit down with Carlson, or even debate Heritage's stance on Big Tech on his show, fell on deaf ears. "There doesn't appear to be any interest in having a sit-down meeting for a call or having someone on the program," Bluey told me.

>> Silence from Fox: I reached out to both Carlson and a Fox spokesperson on Tuesday to see why he had not responded, but never heard back...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- Chad Pergram, Fox's longtime (and widely respected) Capitol Hill producer has been promoted to congressional correspondent... (Deadline)

-- Greg Kelly has landed at Newsmax with a nightly show... (Newsmax)

-- "Gladys Bourdain, a longtime copy editor at The New York Times who helped kick-start the writing career of her son Anthony, the chef who became a world-famous memoirist and television host, died on Friday at a hospice facility in the Bronx. She was 85." Read about Gladys and her love for her children here... (NYT)

Layoffs at iHeartMedia

Kerry Flynn writes: A "technology transformation" is happening at iHeartMedia, the company announced on Tuesday along with new divisions (Region, Metro and Community). But it all means layoffs at the 12,500-person media company. A spokesperson declined to provide an exact number of layoffs. Some radio personalities have already announced their departures via Facebook and Twitter. Read more in Variety…

Lowry recommends "Citizen K"

Brian Lowry emails: "Citizen K" might not end up being the year's best documentary, but by unwinding Vladimir Putin's ascent to power; the Russian oligarchy's rise and fall; and the budding opposition movement, it could well be one of the most significant -- providing a sweeping A-to-Z presentation of that history and its present-day implications.

The title of director Alex Gibney's latest refers to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oligarch who became fabulously wealthy as he cashed in on the move toward privatization, only to run afoul of Putin and spend a decade in prison. To get there, Gibney goes back to the tumultuous tenure of Boris Yeltsin, who essentially mortgaged the country to the oligarchs to win reelection. One of the initial beneficiaries of what's described as "the scam of Russian capitalism" was Khodorkovsky, who misjudged Putin and wound up paying a brutal price for it. Now, he's operating outside of Russia, trying to champion reforms as an exile in London.

Gibney has a history of deep dives into complex topics. But few of his films have felt more timely or important than this one, which premieres in New York on Wednesday, followed by a gradual rollout to cities across the United States.

Hollywood lobbies Pompeo

"In a rare joint action, both TV academies have banded together and sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asking him to act on journalists and documentarians 'being denied entry to the United States despite recognition by the American television industry,'" Variety's Michael Schneider reports. "The letter points to the decision last month to deny entry to Syrian filmmaker Feras Fayyad, who was not able to attend the International Documentary Association's Documentary Awards in Los Angeles and accept his prize for best writing, for 'The Cave.'" Details...

"Felicity Huffman's daughter has been cast in 'The Twilight Zone.' Yes, really"

That's the LAT's headline for this story by Dorany Pineda: "Sophia Macy is moving on from her college admissions scandal days. Next stop? 'The Twilight Zone.' The 19-year-old daughter of actors Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy has been cast in Season 2 of Jordan Peele's thriller anthology TV series in an episode titled 'Among the Untrodden,' a representative for Sophia Macy confirmed..."

>> VF's headline: "Sophia Macy Succeeds Despite Parent's Best Efforts"

Ava DuVernay is not happy with Stephen King's views on diversity

Lisa Respers France writes: The horror author weighed in Tuesday on the lack of diversity in this year's Oscar nominations, tweeting "I would never consider diversity in matters of art. Only quality. It seems to me that to do otherwise would be wrong." Director Ava DuVernay, who has championed inclusion in Hollywood, responded to him with this...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

By Lisa Respers France:

-- Jared Leto gets his muscled vampire on in this new "Morbius" trailer...

-- Will Smith has revealed he was jealous of Tupac's relationship with Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith...

-- Netflix has renewed "You" for a third season...

LAST BUT NOT LEAST...

Lots more Tosh.O

"Comedy Central is staying in business with Daniel Tosh," Deadline's Denise Petski wrote. "The network and Tosh have closed an overall deal that includes a four-season, 80-episode extension for Tosh.O, as part of a first-look deal that would take the long-running franchise through its 16th season..."

Thank you for reading! Send your feedback via email... See you tomorrow...