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Thursday, January 29, 2026 |
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Tom Homan says "you have your First Amendment rights." WBD says CNN is "not for sale." Nielsen says "Bluey" is #1. And there's more. But first... |
With widespread layoffs expected at The Washington Post in the coming weeks, teams of reporters are sending impassioned letters to Jeff Bezos, urging him not to shrink the newsroom.
This morning, I obtained a letter from the newspaper's White House reporters. The team of eight banded together to defend the desks facing major cutbacks.
"If the plan, to the extent there is one, is to reorient around politics we wanted to emphasize how much we rely on collaboration with foreign, sports, local — the entire paper, really. And if other sections are diminished, we all are," bureau chief Matt Viser wrote in an internal Slack chat as he shared the letter. (You can read it in full here.)
The letter tries to speak Bezos's language, appealing to him with data and a determination to grow the Post. "Our colleagues' work helps lift up our own," the WH team told him. Here's my full story...
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Cutting its way to irrelevance? |
The unusual letters to Bezos — first from international correspondents, then the local desk, now the WH team — have followed several private signals about imminent cuts. Reporters fear that the Post is slashing its way to irrelevance; moreover, they wonder whether Bezos, who bought the publication more than a decade ago, cares about it anymore. Thus, the staffers are going over the head of the Post’s publisher, Will Lewis, and trying to get Bezos's attention directly.
The great unknown: Is he reading/listening? An old friend, watching the Post's pleas go unanswered, texted me last night and asked a provocative question: "Is Bezos doing a catch and kill with an entire paper?"
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An 'existential meltdown' |
That's what Charlotte Klein says the Post is going through. In her latest column for NYMag, Klein quotes a former desk head at the paper saying, "When people were deciding which subscriptions they could live without, the Post was an easy cut. And then Jeff made it a lot easier with his decisions. And now you're left with something that's basically on life support. There's no vision for why it should exist or why I need a subscription to the Post versus another organization."
As someone who grew up reading the Post, and happily pays for an account today, I will gently push back and say that I gain value from my subscription virtually every day. For example, I was going to link to this scoop from Travis M. Andrews lower down in this letter: "Kennedy Center's new programming head resigns days after hire was announced."
The Post is showing its worth every day. But the business headwinds are absolutely brutal. This does feel downright "existential."
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Barry Diller sought to buy CNN... |
CNN is "not for sale," Warner Bros. Discovery reiterated last night, after the WSJ's Jeffrey Trachtenberg and Joe Flint reported that media mogul Barry Diller expressed interest in buying the news network. My sources confirmed that 1) Diller made repeated approaches to WBD and that 2) he remains interested in CNN.
And he's not the only one. Other billionaires and media investors have also explored potential paths to acquire CNN in recent years. But the path is blocked, as I explained in this overnight story for CNN.com. Here's the short version:
>> CNN is essential to the creation of Discovery Global later this year because it's a cornerstone of the company's lucrative carriage deals with cable and satellite distributors, which also cover channels like TNT and the Food Network. Pull out the CNN piece, and the rest might wobble.
>> Any such sale would also have undesirable tax consequences for WBD.
>> And there may be practical political considerations, as well. Diller is a longtime critic of Trump and a prominent Democratic donor — exactly the kind of person Trump doesn't want owning CNN. As one media exec told me last night, an attempted Diller-led takeover of CNN would be a non-starter because "everybody understands that M&A goes through the Oval Office right now."
I emailed Diller for comment and haven't heard back. A rep for his company, IAC, declined to comment.
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What it means for Discovery Global |
Diller's interest in CNN may be relevant to the ongoing Wall Street debate over Discovery Global's future valuation, since that's the "main battleground" for Paramount's hostile takeover bid, as William Cohan wrote for Puck yesterday.
By the way, I dug up Diller's interview with Fareed Zakaria from last year, in which Zakaria bluntly asked him whether CNN would survive in the streaming age. "Unless idiots truly come to operate it, of course, it will exist," Diller quipped in response. He said CNN is "the only institutional news brand worldwide that I think actually has a future because it is video. It just needs now to figure out a digital kind of footprint for the video."
>> To that end, CNN touted its progress with All Access in a press release yesterday, saying it has exceeded its "subscription goals for 2025 and is off to a strong start in 2026."
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CNN's homepage headline right now: Tom Homan "says he ordered plan for eventual reduction of officers in Minnesota." Here's the latest from his top-of-the-morning presser.
"The President of the United States called me Monday morning and asked me to deploy here," Homan said. That comment lent credence "to the idea that Trump got the idea from Fox and acted on it," CNN's Aaron Blake pointed out on X.
I wrote about that idea back on Monday, when Fox's Brian Kilmeade repeatedly urged Trump to send Homan. It's on Page One of the NYT this morning: "Worried allies and Fox softened Trump's tone after backlash on ICE."
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'You have your First Amendment rights' |
🤞🏻 In the current climate, it's notable when a Trump official affirms a basic truth such as this. Homan's acknowledgment of the right to protest this morning was "a departure from other officials who called protesters 'agitators' or 'rioters,'" CNN's Michael Williams noted... |
Banger meme, or neo-Nazi bullhorn? |
Don't miss this episode of CNN's "One Thing" podcast, hosted by David Rind. The summary: "We know the Trump administration is extremely online. But experts have started to notice that some of the memes and videos posted by official government accounts have a distinct far-right flavor that draw disturbing parallels with white supremacist and neo-Nazi propaganda." Rind talked with an expert "who says white nationalist groups are getting the message that 'our guys are in control.'"
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'Melania' premieres tonight |
Amazon and Brett Ratner's "Melania" documentary premieres tonight with a red-carpet screening at the Kennedy Center. Drs. Phil and Oz, Donald Trump Jr., Maria Bartiromo, and many other Trumpworld figures are expected to attend.
As the film opens in theaters tomorrow, the news coverage has to emphasize just how unusual this all is. Veteran film producer and one-time Amazon exec Ted Hope said it best to the NYT: "This has to be the most expensive documentary ever made that didn’t involve music licensing. How can it not be equated with currying favor or an outright bribe? How can that not be the case?"
Melania Trump's role as a producer of the film has to be emphasized, too. Reporters and movie critics have not received screeners in advance, so we likely won't see reviews until tomorrow. But CNN's
Betsy Klein has more on what to expect here...
>> Jeremy Fuster headline at TheWrap: "'Melania' Set for a $3 Million Opening Despite Amazon's $35 Million Marketing Push."
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Invitations to quit the 'CBS Evening News' |
"CBS News has begun to seek an unspecified number of buyouts at 'CBS Evening News,' according to two people familiar with the situation, seeking to cull some jobs that are not tied to the union agreement that governs the majority of the staff,” Variety’s Brian Steinberg reported yesterday.
>> This headline is ridiculous: "Tony Dokoupil Under Fire for Interviewing His Own Mom." It was a cute, short, clever segment!
>> Also ridiculous: That CBS chart I featured yesterday showing declining nightly news #'s. Network newsers noticed that the chart showed NBC in third place, when in fact CBS is the also-ran. Page Six noticed too, and quoted a source saying, "For a network that is touting the importance of accuracy and credibility, this was sloppy."
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Brooke Nevils, whose accusations against Matt Lauer led NBC to fire him in 2017, has written a memoir, "Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe."
It's what's known as an "embargoed" book, meaning the publisher,
Viking, tried to keep it a secret until just before publication. Viking announced the book yesterday at the same time NY Mag published the first excerpt, titled "Lessons From My Me Too." Nevils will be on NPR's "Fresh Air" later today for her first interview, and the book comes out next week...
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>> Just announced: The New York Public Library will provide free unlimited access to The New York Times, with no library card or login required. (NYPL)
>> Comcast reported earnings this morning, and the story is a familiar one: Revenue and profit "met or surpassed Wall Street expectations, even as it continued to lose cable TV and internet customers." (Bloomberg)
>> Comcast's Peacock "posted a widened fourth-quarter loss of $552 million, compared with $372 million in the year-ago period," even as the streamer gained eight million paying subscribers year-over-year. (THR)
>> Disney has a massive, 24-hour "handoff" planned for the 2027 Super Bowl, the aforementioned Brian Steinberg writes. (Variety)
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Meta stock soars despite, or due to, huge AI spending |
Meta shares opened up more than 9% this morning after a strong Q4 earnings report card. Jonathan Vanian's headline for CNBC: "Mark Zuckerberg gets green light from Wall Street to keep pouring money into AI."
Here's more from Variety's Todd Spangler: Meta "keeps scarfing down more digital ad dollars — and it's planning to plow billions more into AI initiatives this year, betting that will propel future growth."
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Google to let publishers opt out of AI Overviews? |
News outlets "could be given the power to stop Google scraping their content for its AI Overviews, under measures announced by the UK competition watchdog to loosen its grip on online search," The Guardian's Robert Booth reported yesterday.
And Google "has responded by saying it plans to play ball," Digiday's Jessica Davies wrote.
Danielle Coffey, CEO of the News/Media Alliance, called it a "welcome sign that the company is finally starting to listen to publishers, although only in response to sustained regulatory pressure..."
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More of today's tech talk |
>> In Canada, government officials are in talks with Meta "about restoring news to Facebook, as the Online News Act — which prompted the tech giant to end access to journalism on its platforms — is put on the table as part of trade negotiations with the United States," Marie Woolf reports. (Globe and Mail)
>> Bluesky is "planning to make the app feel more 'live' this year as part of ongoing efforts to build a competent rival to Elon Musk's X," Jess Weatherbed reports. (The Verge)
>> Snap "will create an independent subsidiary for its augmented reality smart glasses," Jaspreet Singh writes. (Reuters)
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Springsteen's 'Streets of Minneapolis' |
Andrew Kirell writes: Bruce Springsteen released a new song yesterday titled "Streets of Minneapolis," a fiery rebuke of Trump and ICE, dedicated to "the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good."
Springsteen has a history of protest songs — most famously "41 Shots (American Skin)," about the NYPD slaying of Amadou Diallo in 1999 — but what's striking here is just how unsubtle the lyrics are. Bruce directly names Good and Pretti, scorns "King Trump's private army from the DHS," and concludes with a chant of "ICE out!" Sure, it might be hamfisted, but these are, uh, hamfisted times...
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Let's hear it for "Bluey." The animated show "was 2025's most-streamed title in the U.S. in 2025 — of any kind, including adult series and films — with 45 billion minutes watched, per Nielsen." CNN's Angus Watson, a dad and fellow, "Bluey" fan, broke it down in this video.
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