15 Years Of Mediaite Events Attract Everybody Who Is Somebody in News
Don Lemon and Sean Hannity attend Mediaite’s Most Influential in News Media party.
As Mediaite approaches its big 15th birthday bash, a look back at our annual parties shows just how drastically the media industry has changed over a decade and a half.
Mediaite founder Dan Abrams offered his thoughts on the momentous anniversary in an essay that, in part, captured some of the snark and skepticism that greeted the website with the name you had to spell twice for people who kept calling us “Mediate” way back in mid-2009.
But by December, a surefire sign of the site’s success and influence emerged when the media stars who populated the articles and Power Grid of the attitudinal upstart showed up for our first power-packed celebration at the Plaza Hotel.
Mediaite’s launch party was covered by Vanity Fair, among many others, and included guests like Katie Couric, Dan Rather, Meredith Vieira, Ann Curry, Hoda Kotb, Ali Velshi, Nancy Grace, Brian Stelter, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Willie Geist, and Cindy Adams. It’s a testament to the site’s longevity that some of the then-hot careers have cooled in the intervening 15 years.
Since then, the annual Mediaite Most Influential in News Media list has become the occasion for an annual gala (pandemics permitting) that draws a shining galaxy of stars — it’s also a rare event that puts people together whom you might not otherwise expect to see anywhere near one another.
In 2018 and 2019, in the era when our festivities were held at Fred’s at Barneys and then-President Donald Trump dominated conversations between media industry bigwigs, our annual bash was attended by Diana Sawyer, Megyn Kelly, George Stephanopoulos, Sean Hannity, Chris Cuomo, Jeff Zucker, George Conway, Jim Acosta, Don Lemon, Brian Kilmeade, Bill Hemmer, Ari Melber, Preet Bharara, Ann Coulter, Pat Kiernan, Juan Williams, Jay Sures, Andy Lack, Phil Griffin, Jessica Tarlov, Harris Faulkner, and Anthony Scaramucci.
The annual party took a break for a few years thanks to the pandemic, but was back in force in 2022. By that time, the media industry had again changed drastically. Chris Licht, now running CNN, turned up among other big media stars whose careers had taken major turns, including Megyn Kelly, who by then had exited both Fox and NBC to start her own independent media venture. Kaitlan Collins had just taken the chair on the ill-fated CNN This Morning, capping a spectacular rise from White House reporter to star host at CNN. She would leap over that speed bump and be named a prime time anchor at the network within months. Sean Spicer had left the Trump White House and was working as a host at Newsmax. John Avlon, who led the Daily Beast for five years, had exited for a hosting job at CNN — and is now running for Congress out on eastern Long Island. Other attendees included Sunny Hostin, Ari Melber, Bill Hemmer, Jim Acosta, Jay Sures, Vicky Ward, Kennedy, Steve Doocy, Brian Stelter, Tara Palmeri, Elie Honig, Oliver Darcy, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Charles Payne, Julie Banderas, and Bill O’Reilly.
This year, Mediaite is pulling out all the stops with a 15th-anniversary bash that figures to be our biggest yet.
