MEDIA
Dylan Byers
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January 16, 2026
The Politico Succession Games Begin…
An era at Politico has been ending for the last decade—at least since the departures of Mike and Jim, then Jake and Anna, and, of course, the sale to Axel Springer. But with John Harris ascending to the chairmanship, again, it’s finally Axel’s baby. And Mathias Döpfner may be looking outside the mothership for Harris’s successor.
Dylan Byers
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January 14, 2026
Tony and Bari on the Rocks
The sponcon set dressing at ‘Evening News’ provoked predictable outcry at the House of Bari. But are brand partners in TV news just an inevitability at this point?
Dylan Byers
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January 9, 2026
Semafornication
Ben and Justin’s recent fundraise at an 8x trailing revenue multiple, which follows David Ellison’s extravagant purchase of The Free Press, suggests we’ve entered a new era of digital media valuations. Unless we’ve just reentered the old one. Anyway, is Punchbowl next in line?
Dylan Byers
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January 7, 2026
The Tony Accords
Tony Dokoupil’s disastrous debut as anchor of CBS Evening News highlights the uncomfortable truth about Bari Weiss’s tenure: While her politics take center stage, it’s her inexperience that’s her real liability.
Dylan Byers
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January 2, 2026
Common Sense & Sensibility
A candid chat with Common Sense Media founder Jim Steyer on what lies in the hearts of Silicon Valley’s biggest bigwigs and what the A.I. bros are doing to your children. Plus, thoughts on Sundar, Zuck, and his brother Tom’s California gubernatorial bid.
Dylan Byers
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December 26, 2025
The Weiss Flag
It’s tempting to view Bari Weiss’s first big blunder—pulling a 60 Minutes segment critical of the administration’s deportation efforts—as purely political, which it may have been. But it may have been the product of something more mundane: Bari doesn’t know how to lead a newsroom.
Dylan Byers
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December 19, 2025
The 2025 Media State of the Union
The inherent tension of the journalist-as-brand model, the continued erosion of institutional authority, the potential for an A.I. newsroom: Industry leaders weighed in on all this and more at a panel this week to unveil the results of our latest Puck–Orchestra survey.
Dylan Byers
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December 17, 2025
The Gulf of Semafor
As Semafor expands further into the Gulf, it’s becoming clear that Justin Smith and Ben Smith’s media baby is looking a lot more like the former than the latter.
Dylan Byers
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December 12, 2025
The Lanzone That Time Forgot
Don’t waste your tears on Yahoo, the Internet 1.0 relic that collapsed into Verizon and then the warm embrace of private equity. C.E.O. Jim Lanzone explains how the Apollo-owned company is poised to make the most of its post-search distribution, and why niche is the new scale.
Dylan Byers
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December 10, 2025
A Weiss Christmas
While The Free Press is flush with holiday spirit, Bari’s job reinventing CBS News is proving more vexing, amid anchor dreams dashed and the age-old challenge of enacting institutional change.
Dylan Byers
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December 5, 2025
CNN’s Bari Christmas
In the wake of Netflix’s Warner Bros. coup, the folks at CNN are, perhaps naively, looking on the bright side: They may not have to work for Bari Weiss after all. But times in Spinoffville are going to get tough—and fast.
Dylan Byers
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December 3, 2025
The Nuzzicracker Ballet
The star-crossed saga of Olivia and Ryan continues its salacious, shameful pas de deux—ensnaring not just Vanity Fair’s new editor but further tainting journalism writ large. Even worse, it elides the real question: Why is a certain pathetic world hanging on every word of a jilted lover’s creepy account proffered without editorial oversight?
Julia Alexander
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November 28, 2025
Substack Entrapment Theory
Google Zero killed the open web, ChatGPT isn’t replacing lost traffic, and superstar talent is a phenomenally difficult business. Digital media companies trying to stay upright are belatedly turning to creator-first subscription platforms in search of sustainable, niche audiences—without realizing that they’ve seen this movie before.
Dylan Byers
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November 26, 2025
Roman Holiday
The internet’s favorite food author finds herself at a familiar crossroads for writers who have become brands unto themselves: trying to balance scale, new ventures, and authenticity while keeping a loyal audience fed… in this case literally.
Dylan Byers
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November 21, 2025
Zaz’s Hollywood Endings
With the final bids for Warner Bros. Discovery under careful consideration, David Zaslav’s tenure as an ersatz Hollywood mogul may be coming to an end. Now, it’s all about the numbers, and which suitors have a glide path to regulatory approval. Just which sunset Zaz will ride into is anyone’s guess.
Dylan Byers
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November 19, 2025
A Brave Nuzzi World
Between the Bravo-ready mess of the Nuzzi-Lizza imbroglio and Michael Wolff’s Epstein deference, it was a monumentally bad week for media ethics. As journalists, even principled ones, become increasingly central characters in the stories themselves, is this kind of spectacle an unavoidable component of a new media world order?
Dylan Byers
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November 14, 2025
The RedBird Balloon
After a second bid to take over The Telegraph met a particularly British brand of resistance, RedBird Capital walked away from the whole ordeal. Now the 170-year-old paper is back to waiting for a Goldilocks buyer.