Hey, hope you're having an excellent weekend. We must have had 40 open tabs at the end of the workweek. Now we've read them all 👓 and recommended the best for you! Plus: The latest on Nexstar, Apple, Errin Haines, John Oliver, "viral trickshot video stars," the Smithsonian, and more... |
If you're anything like me, you'll be captivated by "American Prince: JFK Jr.," the three-part CNN Original Series that premieres tonight at 9pm ET. The docuseries is a form of time travel, exploring John F. Kennedy Jr.'s life, legacy, and — of particular relevance here — his creation of George magazine in the '90s.
A hotly anticipated, star-studded print magazine launch — it really is the stuff of history now. "The magazine's fusion of politics and pop culture foreshadowed a reality-show presidency," the NYT's Alexandra Jacobs writes in this story pegged to the CNN docuseries premiere. "It was exuberant and earnest, a mash-up of Vanity Fair and The New Republic, with lashings of Spy."
"Magazines were what social media is today," said Gary Ginsberg, who was a senior editor at George when it launched. "We were trying to break a mold and disrupt an industry and having a lot of fun doing it," Ginsberg told me, but at the precise moment the internet was blowing up the print business model.
The magazine's struggles worsened after Kennedy died in a plane crash in 1999, ending the dreams that he might follow his father on a presidential path. Ginsberg, a consulting producer on the CNN project, said, "The sadness of the doc is the overriding question of, What if? What if he had lived? What could he have done? And how could he have potentially changed the political environment for the better?"
🔌: The docuseries airs for the next three Saturday nights on CNN.
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>> "The Cult of Kill Tony:" Luke Winkie "traveled to Austin and witnessed the cultural realignment emanating out of the nation's hottest comedy show." He says the audience's allegiance is grounded in something basic: "In a world spinning out of control, they've grown tired of second-guessing their pleasures." (Slate)
>> Meet "the Food52 executive who used the company credit card for everything:" Shannon Muldoon "seems to have coded her fraudulent expenses to make them appear related to the advertising campaigns she oversaw," and ultimately "stole hundreds of thousands of dollars for clothes and travel," Charlotte Klein reports. The "shambolic state of affairs" at the website "apparently allowed Muldoon's ’90s-era Vanity Fair–style grift to go unnoticed." (The Cut)
>> "I know now what I should have known all along: the people in my life are the most critical asset of all," media mogul John Malone writes in this excerpt of his forthcoming memoir. In it, Malone reveals that Ted Turner wanted to team up with him around 2018 and "buy back his most beloved property of all, CNN." (THR)
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Losing the Greatest Generation's memories |
Garrett Graff published an oral history of D-Day last year, and another on the Manhattan Project and the atomic bombings just a few days ago. "Along the way, as I've watched the modern-news unfold, I've come to believe that in losing the World War II generation, we are losing more than just the memories of combat," Graff wrote in this essay. "We are losing, too, the memory and experience of what it means to fight fascism and authoritarianism."
"It doesn't seem a coincidence," Graff wrote, "that the US is watching democracy unwind here at home and flirting with authoritarianism fascism exactly 80 years after the end of World War II. We are in the process of losing the last of the generation who fought to rid the world of fascism and then fought to build an alternate world order." Read his further thoughts about history and memory here...
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👓 Five key political media reads |
>> Fareed Zakaria says "massive changes in public policy that are transforming the world are being made based on a series of assumptions that are anecdotes, exaggerations and lies." (WaPo)
>> The Smithsonian has "unveiled an updated impeachment display" a week after The Post pointed out that President Trump's name "had been removed" as part of a content review. (WaPo)
>> Ken Bensinger and Stuart A. Thompson present "how the right shaped the debate over the Sydney Sweeney ads." (NYT)
>> View from the right: "Leftists in the news media and Hollywood live in a bizarre world of their own where they believe that" Trump has "turned America into a fascistic 'dictatorship,' where people are being disappeared and MAGA supporters are to be feared more than would-be presidential assassins," Geoffrey Dickens writes. (NewsBusters)
>> View from the left: "The media's urge to be 'fair' to Trump is killing the republic," Michael Tomasky writes. (The New Republic)
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>> "Two war reporter brothers, 60 countries and now a pair of new books:" Jennifer Szalai profiled the veteran war correspondents Jon Lee and Scott Anderson. (NYT)
>> Washington Post veteran Paul Farhi wrote about the man Jeff Bezos picked to be his publisher, Will Lewis, and all the missteps Lewis has had. Farhi is left to ask: "Doesn't Bezos care about the slow-motion implosion of an institution whose value transcends its bottom line? After all this time, the most logical conclusion is heartbreaking: No, he doesn't." (Daily Beast)
>> "What's it like to cover your own network when it is in the headlines?" NPR's David Folkenflik talked about that on "All Things Considered" recently. (NPR)
>> THR's reporters discussed "the 20-year David Ellison plan, AI intrigue and other questions after Paramount's big media day." (THR)
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The 'unwritten rule' of Israeli media |
"Over nearly two years of war in the Gaza Strip, Israel's news broadcasts focused almost exclusively on Israeli victims of the conflict," while the suffering in Gaza "was rarely, if ever, mentioned," WaPo's Shira Rubin writes, describing an "unwritten rule" in Israeli media "that kept Palestinian civilians mostly out of sight." Last month, however, reports of starvation in Gaza "began to break through," she writes. The moment was fleeting, but it still gave Israelis "a glimpse of the mammoth crisis."
>> Broadly speaking, since the Hamas attack of October 7, "media analysts say that news channels prioritized their ratings over journalistic principles, attributing the move to Israel's rightward shift, as well as threats from the government for airing critical stories." Read on...
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A big TV broadcaster combo |
Nexstar "is in advanced talks to acquire rival Tegna," the WSJ's Lauren Thomas and Jessica Toonkel scooped yesterday. "A deal could come together soon, granted the talks don't hit any last-minute snags." They note that the deal could be a litmus test for the FCC's deregulation push...
>> Byron Allen's Allen Media Group "has sold 10 local TV stations to Gray Media for $171 million." (Variety)
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>> Europe's new media freedom rules have taken effect — "but undoing years of creeping state control over newsrooms and damage to media independence is a tough task." (Politico)
>> Errin Haines, editor at large for the 19th, is the next president of the National Association of Black Journalists. (Journal-isms)
>> "Fran Drescher, who led the actors' union during its historic 2023 strike, will not be running again for SAG-AFTRA president." Candidates are lining up... (THR)
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👓 More great weekend reads |
>> Joanna Stern writes about OpenAI's launch of GPT-5 and the people (like her) who feel attached to earlier models: "As we come to rely on these models for work, for writing, for emotional support, the transition to something new shouldn't feel so abrupt." (Joanna Stern's newsletter)
>> "A slur for robots and AI has emerged online in recent weeks, offering some sense of growing societal anxiety with increasingly capable technology," specifically AI, Jason Abbruzzese and Rob Wile report. (NBC News)
>> "Meet the talented and ludicrously patient people putting hours into the internet’s most joyful (and pointless) clips:" Richard Godwin captures "the agony and ecstasy of being a viral trickshot video star" in this delightful piece. (The Guardian)
>> Another fun one: "Some of the first reviews ever written for the original 'Legend of Zelda' and 'Super Mario Bros.' have been digitized and published," Matthew Gault writes. (404 Media)
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Colbert's August vacation |
"The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" is "taking a three-week end-of-summer break," LateNighter's Jed Rosenzweig notes. It's perfectly normal, and yet, will probably get more attention than normal, for all the obvious reasons... |
Late night's secret-ish sauce |
"For me, making fun of whoever owns us on a minute-to-minute basis is a thrill," HBO's John Oliver said in this chat with THR's Lacey Rose.
Of the current late night TV conundrums, he said, "I'd really like late night to exist in some form somewhere. My favorite thing is when you can have things that both have a strong point of view and are incredibly stupid. Seth [Meyers], last week, did some great shows, and he also did an amazing segment about how to pronounce 'croissant.' Did you see that? It was so good. It was the hardest I laughed all week. So, I love the fact that those things can coexist, and I don't want that to go away."
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👓 Entertainment notes and quotes |
>> "Jimmy Fallon kisses the conservative ring" by booking Greg Gutfeld, and Hershal Pandya considers what it means. (Vulture)
>> Emily Jashinsky calls Howard Stern "the rebel who outlived his audience." (UnHerd)
>> "Physical media is cool again," and "streaming services have themselves to blame," CT Jones asserts. (Rolling Stone)
>> Last but definitely not least, a fascinating episode of Matt Belloni's "The Town:" "Bollywood star Aamir Khan (basically the Tom Hanks of India) passed on $14M from a subscription streamer to put his new hit movie for rent on YouTube. Why? He explains." (Spotify)
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