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Wednesday, October 8, 2025 |
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Here's the latest on TikTok, Zach Bryan, The Atlantic, Ted Cruz, NBC News, a "Wordle" game show, a creative auction to benefit public TV, and more... |
TikTok has been critiqued for its "addictive design" and sued for creating a "habitual dependence" that hurts children. But the app is "massive, fragmented and opaque." Millions of Americans "are pulled into a nearly infinite variety of niche corners by a recommendation system that we don't know much about, making it difficult to understand how the constant scroll affects real people," The Washington Post says.
So, a Post team asked readers to share their TikTok watch histories. "We teamed up with our audience to measure TikTok’s unmistakable draw," the publication says. The year-long project is out now, and it truly delivers. The analysis shows "just how effective TikTok is at getting even its heaviest users to swipe more and watch more on its platform." Check it out here.
>> Key quote: "Our brains seem to respond to TikTok videos personalized to our tastes in ways similar to how they react to money, food and other pleasurable substances, said Marc Potenza, a professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine."
>> Related: "Facebook is turning into TikTok" is the headline on Jay Peters' latest for The Verge. Meta is updating Reels so that it "learns your interests quicker and shows you newer and more relevant reels..."
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We're 'algorithmically polarized' now |
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently hit on something you've probably noticed if you pay attention to Facebook flame wars or other online political spats: Committed partisans can't imagine anyone of good faith on the other "side."
"It is hard, I think, for folks to understand the broader landscape of public opinion," she said in an Instagram Live video. "Because there are people that are living in a MAGA universe online, that their algorithms feed that to them. People in that mindset think that no one else really has differing opinions."
"That happens as well in progressive content and algorithms," she added, observing that "our country has become algorithmically polarized."
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Former X comms exec breaks with Musk |
Elon Musk likes to say "you are the media now," but "a former communications chief for X thinks otherwise."
Dave Heinzinger, who led X comms from December 2024 through March 2025 and has returned to his previous role as president of PR firm Haymaker, spoke out in an exclusive interview with CNN's Hadas Gold. "The rhetoric around social platforms replacing journalism is not accurate or positive," Heinzinger said.
Key quote: "Social media is not journalism. Social media platforms are a great place to do journalism, and there are fantastic journalists that are doing really great work on platforms, but the platforms themselves are not replacing the craft of journalism. The craft of journalism is different than sharing the raw feed."
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Cruz wants to 'make it easier to sue the government for censorship' |
That's the scoop from the WSJ's Amrith Ramkumar this morning. Sen. Ted Cruz "is calling for changes to the legal system to better protect consumers from government censorship, a move that comes weeks after he criticized the Trump administration’s push to have late-night host Jimmy Kimmel taken off the air." He "plans to introduce a bill in the coming weeks that would codify protections against government-driven censorship, and make it easier for consumers to win monetary damages." More...
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Awaiting Carr's testimony |
Liam Reilly writes: Brendan Carr is sticking to his story. In a letter to Sen. Adam Schiff obtained by CNN, the FCC chair insisted that "the claim by some that the FCC threatened to revoke broadcast licenses if Disney did not fire Jimmy Kimmel is simply incorrect." Carr did not really answer any of the questions Schiff had submitted to him. Maybe Carr will be more forthcoming when he testifies before Cruz's committee next month...
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'The Unfinished Revolution' |
The Atlantic's November issue commemorates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution ahead of next year's celebrations. The entire issue, dubbed "The Unfinished Revolution," explores 250 years of the American experiment through pieces by eminent scholars, essayists and reporters.
The cover, revealed here, unfolds across a three-panel gatefold and features "a tableau of figures drawn from the stories in the issue," painted by Joe McKendry:
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"No occasion would have brought all of these people together in the same room (certainly, it is difficult to imagine King George in the same room as the other George). They represent different sides of the war, of the period’s political ferment, and of early American society itself. One figure existed only in a work of fiction," The Atlantic says. "But together they convey the ambition of this special issue: to capture the Revolutionary Era in all of its complexity, contradictions, and ingenuity." Here is Jeffrey Goldberg's editor's note about the issue...
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This morning's Chicago Sun-Times banner headline is "BOOTS ON THE GROUND," showing the arrival of Texas National Guard members at a military training facility in Illinois. The Tribune's front page features a similar photo and plays up Gov. JB Pritzker's claim that President Trump is "suffering dementia."
>> Moments ago Trump wrote on Truth Social that the "Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also!"
>> "Federalism is breaking," Protect Democracy's Amanda Carpenter wrote overnight. "The system cannot stand when troops from a red state are sent to police a blue state against the will of its elected leaders and based on a lie."
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Zach Bryan shrugs 'resistance' tag |
Andrew Kirell writes: Country star Zach Bryan briefly became the poster boy for anti-ICE resistance after he shared a snippet of a new song, titled "Bad News," lamenting how America is "fading" with the topical lyrics: "ICE is gonna come bust down your door."
The White House responded yesterday by claiming Bryan "wants to Open The Gates to criminal illegal aliens and has Condemned heroic ICE officers" and that "a majority of Americans disagree with him and support President Trump’s great American Revival." Trump's DHS also took a jab at the singer-songwriter.
Shortly thereafter, Bryan said his lyrics had been "misconstrued" by all. "This song is about how much I love this country and everyone in it more than anything," he wrote on IG Stories. "When you hear the rest of the song, you will understand the full context that hits on both sides of the aisle... Left wing or right wing, we’re all one bird and American. To be clear I’m on neither of these radical sides."
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Bari Weiss briefly spoke on yesterday's 9 a.m. CBS News editorial call. News division prez Tom Cibrowski praised her "energy and passion" and told staffers that CBS and The Free Press are "going to learn a lot from each other," Semafor's Max Tani reported. Weiss told staffers she wants to "win" and ended her remarks by declaring, "Let's do the fucking news," per Tani. That line was met with "eyerolls," reports The Independent's Justin Baragona.
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"When there's a big media story like this, everybody eats," The Atlantic's Caitlin Flanagan says. "The haters write hateful stories; the hateful stories alert new readers to the existence of an outlet they might like, and instill in those readers a fierce loyalty to it because the criticism is so absurd. A current beef against Weiss is that she'll fail because she lacks broadcast experience. The beef against Weiss when she left the Times was that she would sink into obscurity. And the beef against her when she started to become successful was that she was selling out. If there's one person in the world I wouldn't bet against now, it's Bari Weiss."
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>> A new reporting structure at NBC News means that Janelle Rodriguez, who oversees "NBC Nightly News" and NBC News Now, will now report to Rebecca Blumenstein. (TheWrap)
>> Lynn Forester de Rothschild "has put her family's entire 26.7% stake in The Economist up for sale," Sara Fischer reports. (Axios)
>> The Athletic is teaming up with EA Sports in a deal that provides sports fans with breaking news, stats, scores, and highlights from The Athletic in EA's new app. (NYT Co)
>> Another boldface-name CNN hire: Rachel Tashjian, WaPo's fashion critic for the past two years, is joining as CNN's senior style reporter. (Business of Fashion)
>> Another WaPo exit: Veteran food critic Tom Sietsema has said farewell with an outstanding final column. Like so many, I grew up reading Sietsema's work, so I'm intrigued by the hints he is dropping about his next project... (WaPo)
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🎨 Creative public TV fundraiser |
"The Joy of Painting" wasn't just an iconic public TV show; it was timeless. Episodes from the 1980s are still rerun and streamed decades later. Now, "thirty paintings created by the bushy-haired, soft-spoken Bob Ross will soon be up for auction to defray the costs of programming for small and rural public television stations suffering under cuts in federal funding," The AP reports, "with all profits “pledged to stations that use content from distributor American Public Television." Here are two of the paintings...
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A game show "based on the popular New York Times puzzle Wordle is in development at NBC, with Today anchor Savannah Guthrie set to host," THR's Rick Porter reports. "The project comes from Universal Television Alternative Studio and Jimmy Fallon's Electric Hot Dog company," with Fallon attached to executive produce, expanding his NBC game show empire...
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Searching for clues in D4vd's lyrics |
D4vd went from "a homeschooled Houston teenager posting Fortnite videos online to a burgeoning pop star with a multimillion-dollar recording contract." Now his fans "are dissecting his DIY songs about twisted romance for clues, after the badly decomposed body of a 15-year-old girl was found in the trunk of a Tesla he owned," the LA Times reports. Police say the singer is cooperating with the investigation...
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>> Taylor Swift's "The Life of a Showgirl" "has now earned 3.5 million equivalent album units in the United States," surpassing the modern-era single-week sales record held by Adele's "25." (Billboard)
>> Swift's reaction to mixed reviews of the album and other criticism: "The rule of show business is if it's the first week of my album release and you are saying either my name or my album title, you're helping." (Variety)
>> Speaking of mixed reviews, Disney's "TRON: Ares" is currently averaging 50% on Metacritic and 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. (RT)
>> Though Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another" is "being heralded as a masterpiece by many" — because it is — "some conservatives accuse it of potentially inspiring left-wing violence," James Hibberd writes. (THR)
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