Mediaite ONE SHEET: Fauci Under Fire, 60 Minutes’ Big Announcement, and More!

TOP STORY

60 MINUTES MAKES ITS MOVE

CBS announced a slate of hires for 60 Minutes yesterday, news that was initially shared via email by the show’s executive producer Nick Bilton. The Bari Weiss-helmed network’s moves raised more than a few eyebrows, and prompted a lot of discussion in this morning’s stack.

The biggest surprise appears to have been the network’s decision to hire Ross Douthat, a right-leaning Opinion columnist at The New York Times who has no experience as a television reporter — or even as a reporter, period. Taking on a role at one of the most venerated news programs of all time is a tall order for anyone, and that’s especially true for someone who will, presumably, be learning a lot on the fly.

60 Minutes hasn’t yet offered more detail in terms of when the new hires, which also include Sebastian Junger, Gianna Toboni, and Trevor Phillips as contributors, will make their debut on the network or what kind of editorial shift viewers can expect, though the stack wasted little time speculating about the latter.

THREE TAKES

The Poynter Report, Tom Jones—The hiring of Douthat is either “an inspired, out-of-the-box great hire meant to shake life into a long-running news show” or it’s “just further proof of a network desperately pushing to the right, even if it means remodeling a show that was already perfectly built,” Jones wrote this morning. No matter what, he added, “it will make for must-see TV.” That Douthat was hired without TV experience isn’t new for Weiss, either—Bilton, who similarly has no television experience of his own, was hired to replace Tanya Simon earlier this year. Once Douthat makes his debut, critics of CBS will undoubtedly be watching closely to see if his hiring pushes the show and network further to the political right.

Status, Oliver Darcy—Darcy’s team received a tip of Douthat’s hiring yesterday, and Natalie Korach tweeted the report roughly 20 minutes before Bilton’s message was sent out. Darcy soon learned some of the show’s staff “were not exactly thrilled to hear about Douthat’s appointment.” On top of that, there was “already concern that even seasoned television correspondents would face a steep learning curve producing the show’s signature 13-minute investigative pieces”—and that’s before Douthat’s name was thrown into the ring. Junger and Toboni are “perfectly fine” but fall short of the precedent set by 60 Minutes in the past. One industry vet compared the new hires to Mike Wallace, Diane Sawyer, Ed Bradley, and Scott Pelley—and was not pleased.  “They never would have been considered for the actual 60 Minutes,” they told Status.

Weiss, Darcy added, also lacked television experience when she was hired by David Ellison. Since then, she has “failed to attract new viewers, but she has also driven away CBS News’ existing audience in droves.”

Barrett Media, Garrett Searight—The new hires come amid what Searight described as “one of the most dramatic transitions” in the program’s history. But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing, the way Searight sees it, the network plans to “preserve the program’s prominence by pairing established veterans with accomplished new voices.” While many are wary of the new names, there is an opportunity here for CBS to dig 60 Minutes out of the ditch the program’s been in since last year. As he put it, “If the quartet connects with audiences, the network could quickly restore stability while positioning 60 Minutes for its next generation.”

TAKEAWAY: It’s tough not to see these new hires as anything other than a signal CBS and 60 Minutes is moving in a conservative direction, our authors agree today. The question is, will that shift take the program to the middle, or all the way to the right? Yesterday’s news emboldened skeptics who believe that 60 Minutes will end up being a shell of what it once was. Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, who was hired by Weiss to replace John Dickerson and Maurice DuBois after Paramount’s merger with Skydance, is experiencing all-time viewership lows, averaging below 4 million for the fourth straight month. If Dokoupil’s early performance is indication, there’s plenty of reason to worry Weiss could be leading 60 Minutes straight into what new contributor Junger might call the perfect storm.

📰 TOP SCOOPS & ANALYSIS 📰

SCOOP POLITICO Playbook, Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, and Adam Wren—Anthony Fauci’s blockbuster hearing on Capitol Hill—during which he has repeatedly taken the fifth—will surely dominate tomorrow’s stack. But for today, Politico Playbook had the backstory of a behind-the-scenes battle waged by Fauci’s legal team to stop the hearing from happening. Playbook reported on a letter sent last month by Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, to Sen. Rand Paul, in which he “aggressively rejected Paul’s request for a ‘voluntary transcribed interview.’” Fauci’s legal team further accused Paul, who has a five-year-long beef with the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of being “single-mindedly fixated on seeing Dr. Fauci prosecuted for imaginary crimes.”

ANALYSIS Morning Brew, Adam Epstein—FIFA is planning to allow private stakes in the World Cup at the behest of private investors, who would supply $20 million. That group includes Josh Kushner (brother of Jared, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law). Europe’s Union of European Football Associations immediately voiced opposition to the proposal, but FIFA President Gianni Infantino’s ties to the Trump administration may mean this is happening whether they like it or not. As Epstein pointed out, “Infantino said the proposal is about ‘the democratization of football worldwide.’”

ANALYSIS Morning Brew, Dave Lozo—Morning Brew offered a one-two punch this morning. It turns out private conversations between individuals and Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, have been made public, despite the company’s claim otherwise. The conversations, which Lozo pointed out include the phone numbers of children as well as sensitive medical information, were discovered by Reddit sleuths this weekend. The creator of Claude told TechCrunch such conversations would only be searchable in Google if they’re “posted where web crawlers can find them”—but Google disagrees. The search giant told Wired that Anthropic has “clear controls” over whether any web page is indexed. Per Lozo, the links to the chats were still available as late as Monday morning, and “it’s possible that third parties have already gotten their hands on the data.”

ANALYSIS Punchbowl News, Laura Weiss, Andrew Desiderio, Anthony Adragna and Samantha Handler—Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been “fending off renewed pressure” from Trump and “MAGA Hardliners” to push the SAVE America Act through, something that is only “deepening GOP in-fighting less than 100 days until the midterms,” Weiss, Desiderio, Adragna, and Handler wrote this morning. On top of that, Thune is heading the attempted nomination of Todd Blanche and the budget reconciliation effort, and it’s all adding up to be a lot. “It’s already too late for Thune to escape the summer unscathed by Trump’s demands – and it will get worse if Trump’s other priorities collapse or the internal revolts gain steam,” the group pointed out. The 86-12 Senate vote in favor of the Russia sanctions bill is “paying off in a big way,” but the “House outlook is murkier” and could spell doom.

ANALYSIS Simon Owens’ Media Newsletter, Simon Owens—ABC is launching a true crime podcast, Variety announced yesterday, but it will only be available on Apple Podcasts. This means “more than half the podcast listening market is immediately left out” something that prompted Owens to speculate about why legacy media has been so hesitant to jump into the podcast world in the first place. Independent podcasters are making “north of a billion dollars a year on platforms like Patreon, Substack, and SupportingCast” and audiences have shown they’re willing to pay for subscriptions, but networks are mostly offering their podcasts, when they have them, for free. The reason, Owens concluded, is that “a unified subscription strategy is a massive headache.” Podcasts are difficult to monopolize, which can be a good thing—but it also makes “launching a cohesive paid strategy exceptionally difficult.” In the end, it’s just a lot easier to bring “audiences back to a website where the publisher fully controls the subscription funnel.”

ANALYSIS POLITICO Playbook, Dasha Burns, Will Steakin, and Adam Wren—Anyone who thought acting Director of National Intelligence Bill Pulte would go down without a fight is mistaken, Burns, Steakin, and Wren insisted this morning. Despite Jay Clayton’s Tuesday night confirmation for the role Pulte has been occupying, the latter is putting pressure on the president “to delay Clayton’s swearing-in, or at least trying to stay in the job longer,” per a White House official who spoke to Politico. Pulte isn’t expected to fully disappear, as he’ll still be in charge of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, but for now he’s arguing to the president that he “needs more time to finish his work.” But he doesn’t have support in the West Wing, where “officials are eager to install Clayton and hopeful the president is too.”

📈BUSINESS OF MEDIA 🎥

Axios Media Trends, Sara Fischer — Barry Diller’s People Inc. is slowly exploring a sale of The Daily Beast now that executives Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles have pushed the outlet back to profitability. By shifting the business model away from an over-reliance on banner ads and diversifying into podcasts, subscriptions, and syndication, they made it a much more attractive asset for potential buyers. QUOTE 📣 “Conversations about a sale are serious but not necessarily immediate.”

Axios Media Trends, Sara Fischer — A new media startup called Eventual has launched in partnership with Polymarket to give top prediction market traders a platform for their own news and analysis. Founded by former blogger Alex Keeney, it operates on the idea that prediction market data can be utilized to understand everything from the economy to elections, but still (and crucially) lets skilled humans translate complex betting insights for the general public. QUOTE 📣Per Keeney, “Prediction markets are a powerful tool for understanding our future. But they need skilled humans to translate their insights.”

CNN Reliable Sources, Brian Stelter — The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is fighting back with a massive $150 million lawsuit against Jay Penske and Penske Media, alleging a clandestine scheme to fraudulently acquire the Golden Globes and ultimately destroy the HFPA. The suit claims Penske sought to exert complete control over the Hollywood trades, entertainment awards, and the lucrative For Your Consideration advertising markets. QUOTE 📣Per a spokesperson for the Golden Globes, though, this suit simply “continues the absurdity and irrationality that the industry has come to expect from the defunct organization formerly known as the HFPA.”

Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter, Simon Owens — Bloomberg LP is reportedly considering an IPO, which more or less serves as a massive testament to the impenetrable “information moat” the company has built over the last 40 years. Owens notes that the core of this success is the $30,000-a-year Bloomberg Terminal, which is fed directly by a proprietary 2,700-person newsroom that aspiring start-ups simply cannot replicate. QUOTE 📣 “Over the past 30 years, dozens of startups have launched aiming to be the ‘Bloomberg killer.’ Virtually all have failed for one simple reason: they lack a world-class, proprietary newsroom feeding their platform from the inside.”

Breaker, Lachlan Cartwright — Warner Bros. Discovery’s chief communications officer, Robert Gibbs, is reportedly losing the confidence of his colleagues as the former Obama press secretary is increasingly viewed as “aloof” internally. As the big Paramount-Skydance merger looms, insiders are speculating that Paramount’s own Melissa Zuckerman could rise up to oversee comms for the combined media giant if the deal ultimately closes. QUOTE 📣”Gibbs has also not endeared himself to reporters who cover Hollywood during his two-year tour of duty either … He has left much of the legwork of interacting with journalists to Corporate Comms Executive Megan Klein, and her colleague, former Condé Nast EVP Global Communications Joe Libonati, who joined the company in December as SVP Comms.”

Digiday Daily, Seb Joseph and Kimeko McCoy — During Omnicom’s recent Q2 earnings call, CEO John Wren made a candid admission about the current state of artificial intelligence in the advertising world: the industry still hasn’t figured out how to properly price it. The confession came after analysts pressed him on whether the supposed cost savings generated by AI tools were actually returning to client marketing budgets or simply leaking out elsewhere in the supply chain. QUOTE 📣”The marketplace hasn’t seen what the cost of this AI is yet.”

OTHER COOL STUFF

Morning Brew: LeBron James, who officially signed with the Philadelphia 76ers this week (if you didn’t hear!), is reportedly considering living in New York City and commuting to Philly via helicopter. It’s only about a 45-minute ride, which is pretty good for a commute. Stars: They’re just like us!

Feed Me: Cafes are starting to add orange to their coffee menus. A recent trend at California spots like LA’s Maru and San Diego’s Immersion shows baristas adding everything from a simple slice of orange to an orange compote to their coffee drinks. Before you crinkle your nose, remember that banana was trending a few months ago and lavender has been on the rise for years. It’s just a new era of caffeine enjoyment. If you’re upset, don’t worry. You can still clutch a mug of black drip while you tell those kids to get off your lawn.

Breaker: Former Forbes Chief Content Officer Randall Lane mysteriously departed the publication this week, and it turns out he’s been spending some of his time helping write lyrics for a Hamilton-style musical about Benjamin Franklin. Titled The Sound of America, the production’s teaser promises a story featuring “a British Invasion, and a finale that brings the house down.” There’s still no official explanation for his sudden exit, but wouldn’t it be cool if he just wanted to segue into musical theater?

👀 WHAT GOT MISSED? 👀

The Free Press—Ebay will be paying a Massachusetts couple $50 million after a years-long campaign that saw former employees mailing them “anonymous packages containing live insects and a bloody pig Halloween mask.” The couple founded EcommerceBytes, an e-commerce newsletter that was often critical of eBay’s practices. In their 2021 lawsuit filed in Boston, David and Ina Steiner accused eBay of attempting to “intimidate, threaten to kill, torture, terrorize, stalk and silence them.”

🏆 NEWSLETTER OF THE DAY 🏆

The Bulwark’s Morning Shots, Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger—Morning Shots offered a truly cohesive look at several key Trump administration issues of late. That includes the criminal indictment against James Comey, as documents filed last night by his lawyers reveal Blanche’s investigation included “a ludicrous snipe hunt in which federal officials sought high and low to find people who would testify that “86” is an old mob threat, interviewing old mobsters and Comey associates to prove he should have known as much.”

The list also includes Trump’s ongoing war in Iran, and the president’s unlikely claim “the late Sen. Lindsey Graham’s dying wish was a peace deal with Iran.” As Egger noted, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to cover “Donald Trump’s endless Iran war” because the headlines repeat themselves, the U.S. keeps firing off missiles, and nothing really changes. “I challenge anyone to spend so many months submerged in this sort of suspended reality without feeling like they’re losing their mind,” Egger concluded.

And, finally, the duo looked at the more than $8 billion in grants for clean energy the Trump administration admitted to nixing “solely on the fact that those grants were headed to states that voted for Kamala Harris” — as well as Trump’s decision to block FEMA grants to New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island.” Suggestions that the president wants to levy retaliatory action against states he didn’t win is nothing new, but that doesn’t mean it’s not profoundly concerning.

This newsletter was produced by Lindsey Ellefson.