EXEC SUMMARY: Happy Halloween! I'm in a control room at NY1, New York's cable news channel, because my wife is co-anchoring the Village Halloween Parade tonight. Thus, a special early edition of the newsletter, just in time for trick-or-treating...
How newsrooms celebrate Halloween
Here's a look at just a few of the costumes that were shared on social media today, from "Today" and "GMA" to the NYT and local TV stations... | | -- There are "First amend mints" in the candy bowl at the Oregonian...
-- There's a dinosaur in the Arizona Republic newsroom...
-- Some elaborate decorations at KUER, NPR's Utah affiliate...
-- If you missed the annual competition between "Today" and "GMA," EW has a photo gallery...
-- Beth Rousseau at Action News Jacksonville dresses up as her photographer every year...
-- Over on "The View," Meghan McCain and Joy Behar dressed up as the twins from The Shining...
-- KSDK's Chris Davis tweeted: "Halloween is something else. Normally I'd be alarmed if a surgeon in full scrubs sprinted into our newsroom. Not today!"
-- And our very own Kerry Flynn came to work dressed as Eleven from "Stranger Things," specifically the romper she wears in Season 3. She says it's the best impulse purchase she's ever made thanks to Twitter...
Here are some more costumes that I spotted today, from the staffs at KTOO in Juneau, WBRZ in Baton Rouge, CBC in Vancouver, KTAR in Phoenix, Carroll County Times in MD, and The Oklahoman... | |  And... drumroll please... here's the best journalism-themed costume I spotted on Twitter today...
It belongs to Aura Bogado, an investigative immigration reporter at Reveal. She says "the scariest thing about my costume is how much it resembles some of the responsive FOIA records we get at Reveal."
Well played!
BTW, if you're in NYC, the parade will be live at 8pm ET... Every year, my costume is "Jamie's production assistant..."
Impeachment Halloween
That's what The Drudge Report dubbed Thursday... All the major networks carried the vote live... And the NYT's lead headline right now is "A Divided House Endorses Impeachment Inquiry Into Trump..."
"The Impeachment Inquiry Will Now Be Televised"
...That is Clare Malone's headline at FiveThirtyEight. House Dems "seem more confident than ever that as testimony becomes public the facts of the matter will convince the general public of their side as they move to draw articles of impeachment against President Trump," she wrote. It's still not clear when the televised hearings will start...
FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE
-- Stephen Colbert's interview with Nancy Pelosi airs on Thursday's "Late Show..."
-- As I mentioned last night, Laura Ingraham is continuing to pressure GOP lawmakers to stick with Trump. On Thursday morning Trump approvingly tweeted out her comments... (Twitter)
-- This week's TIME magazine's cover line: "Rudy Giuliani was supposed to protect Donald Trump. He might get him impeached." (TIME)
Zucker on this week's "Reliable Sources" podcast
Staying with the spooky scary Halloween theme... Interviewing the boss!
Just kidding. This week's "Reliable Sources" podcast features my full interview with CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker from last week's CITIZEN by CNN conference.
We talked about CNN in the Trump era, fact-checking, Fox News, the future of TV, and more. Tune in via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred app...
TODAY IN FOXLANDIA...
Napolitano: GOP's argument is to 'smear the witnesses' and 'smear the process'
Oliver Darcy emails: Judge Andrew Napolitano said in a Thursday video that the strategy being employed by Republican lawmakers was to " smear the witnesses being interrogated in secret and to smear the process." Napolitano, who has repeatedly noted that the House is following the rules Republicans previously set, said that at the end of the day, "the president's people will have to address this on the merits, not the process." Wallace: "It was a lot more than a phone call"
Darcy continues: In related news, Chris Wallace debunked a popular Republican talking point during an "America's Newsroom" appearance Thursday. Trump and his allies have repeatedly pointed to the transcript of the July phone call, (falsely) claiming it absolves him.
Wallace pointed out that there is a lot more to the story. "It was a lot more than a phone call," Wallace said. "It was a coordinated campaign." Wallace added, "What you've heard from Bill Taylor and Fiona Hill and Colonel Vindman and a bunch of others is that this was a coordinated campaign by people outside the regular diplomatic channels at the State Department to put pressure on Ukraine to do certain things…It didn't begin and end with a phone call." Meanwhile... Fox "hard news" anchor lobs softballs at WH press sec
Darcy adds: While Wallace exemplifies what it means to be a "straight news" journalist, many others on Fox who occupy such roles do not. An example: Fox "hard news" anchor Harris Faulkner hosted Stephanie Grisham on her show Thursday. And, instead of pressing her with any meaningful questions, Faulkner lobbed softballs about the White House's messaging strategy. At one point, Faulkner even played a Trump ad and asked Grisham for her response. "I think that the ad was exactly right," Grisham said. Not exactly a hard-hitting interview.
>> Worth reiterating: Grisham hasn't held a single press briefing since becoming press secretary. Instead, she chooses to hide in friendly corners of the world like Faulkner's show...
Herridge leaves Fox
CBS News started the day by announcing the hire of Catherine Herridge as senior investigative correspondent. This is another major defection from the newsroom of Fox News... Herridge was a founding employee of Fox News in 1996... I'm told her contract expired over the summer, and Fox wanted to renew her, but knew she might leave. She was in talks to join CBS before Shep Smith resigned on October 11, per two sources.
>> Herridge thanked Rupert Murdoch in a statement released by Fox, but also raised eyebrows in a separate statement released by CBS. She said "CBS News has always placed a premium on enterprise journalism and powerful investigations. I feel privileged to join a team where facts and storytelling will always matter." A jab at Fox?
A strange skirmish in right-wing media
Oliver Darcy emails: Here's a dust-up in right-wing media no one saw coming. In her column, Michelle Malkin ripped Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. Malkin, an immigration hardliner, wrote, "I was flabbergasted to hear Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk telling students at a university campus lecture last week that 'We should staple a green card behind your diploma.'"
Malkin, zinging Kirk for his supposed "cluelessness about immigration policy and law," said the immigration idea from the Turning Point USA founder was "a sadistic and suicidal way to win the 'culture war,' put 'America First,' and 'Make America Great Again.'" Yikes!
CNN's Nats fans celebrate World Series win | | Oliver Darcy emails: Some of CNN's biggest Nationals fans made an on-air appearance Thursday afternoon to applaud the team for its first World Series win. Included among them was DC bureau chief Sam Feist, who noted that the team had, for a moment, brought a divided city together.
"At the game on Friday night...there were Republicans, there were Democrats, there were independents. I can't remember the last time that Washington came together, for anything," Feist said. "And this is a pretty divided time in Washington." Wolf Blitzer, a die-hard Nats fan, agreed. Blitzer noted that "you saw everybody" at the games and observed "we all had one thing in common."
>> Related: There is nothing like sports journalism after a championship win. If you agree with me, you'll want to read this beautifully written story by WaPo's Dave Sheinin and Sam Fortier summing up Game 7 and the entire Nationals season...
MLB ratings score for Fox, but...
Frank Pallotta writes: Fox's broadcast of the Nationals winning their first World Series title averaged roughly 23 million viewers. It peaked at 27 million viewers from 11 til 11:15pm ET.
While the game was a record-breaker in the DC metro area, it "did not rate as well nationally," WaPo's Ben Strauss notes, drawing "the fewest viewers for a Game 7 of the World Series this decade..."
WaPo sells like hot cakes
The Washington Post sold special copies of its "CHAMPS" ballpark edition and its full paper outside the paper's HQ on Thursday. "We sold ten times our normal single copy sales and are going to print more tonight," a Post spokeswoman told me...
FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO
-- AP Washington bureau chief Julie Pace points out this "striking figure" from a new survey: "61% of Americans say Trump has little or no respect for the country's democratic institutions and traditions, an issue that strikes at the heart of the impeachment inquiry..." (AP)
-- "Trump makes big pro-Brexit intervention in U.K. election:" He called into Nigel Farage's radio program on LBC... (Axios)
-- Michael Calderone says the Rep. Katie Hill controversy, likely to be compounded by an "onslaught of nude photos," "presents an epic dilemma for the news media..." (Politico)
-- This just in from Slate: In 24 hours, the first episode of "Slow Burn" season three, about Tupac and Biggie, "was downloaded more than 300,000 times, making it the most downloaded episode of any Slate podcast in a single day," per a spokeswoman... (Slate)
Deadspin's horror story
Kerry Flynn writes: At least 13 Deadspin staffers have now resigned over the past two days after interim EIC Barry Petchesky was fired for not following the "stick to sports" mandate from management. Today, one of the resigned staffers Drew Magary, who literally had his own vertical on Deadspin's site, published a blog on G/O Media's Kinja. He wrote, "It's a bitter truth that none of us have ever technically owned [Deadspin] The one time I had some equity in this joint, a vampiric billionaire and a horny wrestler and and a braindead Florida jury all conspired to render it literally worthless. Now a private equity firm has finally come along to finish the job for good, and render Deadspin spiritually worthless."
David Roth published some already edited stories to Deadspin and Deadcast, the site's podcast which the staff recorded on Wednesday. He then resigned.
G/O Media's response...
Kerry continues: GMG Union tweeted on Wednesday claiming non-sports content was some of its "most well-read coverage." G/O Media's response on Thursday cherrypicked data from last month to claim that's not true. A spokesperson said, "In September, unsurprisingly, 24 of the top 25 stories on Deadspin were sports-related while non-sports content accounted for less than 1 percent of the page views on the site. Given those facts, we simply believe it makes sense to focus attention and resources on even more sports coverage to serve our readers what they want." But Petchesky disputed that on Twitter. And The Daily Beast's Max Tani tweeted, "According to internal stats I've seen, on average, posts on The Concourse earn 108% more than Deadspin posts. As of earlier this year, the average PVs per post for The Concourse was 129k vs 62k for Deadspin's main page."
I've asked G/O Media to share more stats if they want to prove their point. A spokesperson told me they're "working on it."
"Obits" for Deadspin
Kerry adds: It might be too soon to declare Deadspin's death, but its slow demise has inspired a slew of "obits" about the site. In addition to fellow writers and readers paying tribute on Twitter, there were columns from The Ringer, Slate, The New Republic, The Nation, Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Portland Mercury, to name a few...
FRIDAY PLANNER
Apple TV+ will start streaming all around the world...
Trump will hold a rally in Tupelo, Mississippi...
Many Dem presidential candidates will be at the Iowa Democratic Party's Liberty and Justice Fundraiser. CNN's Ron Brownstein says the dinner "testifies to the outsized influence Iowa continues to wield in the presidential nominating process..."
Sorkin takes on Zuckerberg in NYT
Frank Pallotta writes: An open letter to the NYT isn't cool. You know what's cool? An open letter to the NYT about Mark Zuckerberg written by Aaron Sorkin. The Oscar-winning writer of "The Social Network" added to the chorus of voices criticizing Facebook's stance on political ads on Thursday.
"I admire your deep belief in free speech," Sorkin wrote. "But this can't possibly be the outcome you and I want, to have crazy lies pumped into the water supply that corrupt the most important decisions we make together." Sorkin ended his scathing open letter by saying that if he had known that Zuckerberg felt this way, he would have "had the Winklevoss twins invent Facebook."
>> Later on Thursday, Zuckerberg posted on Facebook a quote about freedom of speech from Sorkin's "The American President:" | |
A Facebook fact-checker has a proposal...
"One of the companies that Facebook hired to fact-check posts on its platform will propose a change to Facebook's policy allowing politicians to run ads containing falsehoods," Donie O'Sullivan reports. Lead Stories, led by former CNNer Alan Duke, "will propose that fact-checkers vet ads from politicians and that those fact-checks then be reviewed by a new nonpartisan blue-ribbon panel. Lead Stories will make the proposal at a meeting for Facebook's fact-checkers at Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters next week." More...
FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE
-- Mashable's Morgan Sung reports: "TikTok users are calling for more visibility for creators of color on the platform..." (Mashable)
Something scary: "Impostor local sites"
Katie Pellico writes: Brendan Nyhan's latest for NYT Upshot sizes up the threat of "impostor local sites," an issue was covered in this newsletter last week. Nyhan says these sites that look like local papers, but have a partisan agenda, "exploit the relatively high trust Americans express in local news outlets." A new Poynter survey from Nyhan, Andrew Guess and Jason Reifler reinforced this trust in, and preference for, local sources, especially "among Republican identifiers and people with a negative view of the news media."
>> Nyhan points out that politicians are using the tactic too. Reps. Devin Nunes and Kelli Ward have "created or promoted seemingly independent local websites."
>> "Covertly ideological local sources aren't exclusively online. The media giant Sinclair has similarly blurred the lines between local and national journalism in television news," he says.
>> He warns: "The prevalence of these impostors is likely to increase as the 2020 election approaches, threatening to mislead more voters and to promote greater skepticism toward all news media, including the local outlets that so many Americans rely on and trust." Read on...
| | Apple TV+ is coming for your iPhone
Frank Pallotta writes: Apple TV+ hits the airwaves on Friday, and by airwaves I mean your iPhone and other devices, too. Apple is making the streaming service widely accessible, even on competing devices like Roku and Fire TV.
Friday's launch is a huge moment for the company and for CEO Tim Cook. "I view the streaming endeavor as one of the most pivotal chapters in Cook's legacy," Dan Ives, managing director at Wedbush Securities, told me. "Ultimately, the success or failure of Apple's streaming initiative is going to play a big role in the company's ability to further monetize its 900 million iPhone customers worldwide."
The iPhone's declining sales means Apple has to convince existing customers to pay for services on the phones and laptops they already own. In short, if the Steve Jobs era of Apple was defined by the unparalleled success of iPhone, the Cook era may be defined by what Apple can convince us to consume on those devices. Here's my story breaking down everything you need to know, from "The Morning Show" to Oprah...
Notes and quotes
-- Apple TV+ will launch on the same day in over 100 countries.
-- The cost is $4.99 a month, but it's free for a year with the purchase of a new Apple product. "It's a gift to our users," Cook says... "This allows us to focus on maximizing subscribers, particularly in the early going."
-- Katy Huberty, an equity analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote last week that "We estimate Apple TV+ can become a $9 billion revenue business with 136 million paid subscribers by [fiscal year 2025]."
-- The LA Times asks: Can it compete with Disney? (Is it even trying to?) And The Ringer asks: What does Apple TV+ want to be?
-- Apple studio boss Zack Van Amburg to the AP: "There's an expression that we use here across the board at Apple: 'Come to Apple and do the best work of your life.' That's actually what we ask of everyone who comes here."
-- His counterpart Jamie Erlicht to Variety: "There's no piece of data on Nov. 2 that in any way, shape or form can change the course of what we've been doing. What I'm most excited about is that the world is going to be able to see what we've been doing. And they're going to see a user interface that will change the way the consumer watches video. It's a real experience."
Oprah and Ta-Nehisi
"The first installment of 'Oprah's Book Club' will debut with the launch of Apple TV+, featuring a sit-down interview with Oprah Winfrey and award-winning author and journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates, as he discusses his first novel and Oprah Book Club selection, 'The Water Dancer,'" TheWrap's Jennifer Maas notes...
--> The service also premieres with one feature film, "The Elephant Queen," a "kid-friendly nature documentary..."
Lowry's curtain-raiser
Brian Lowry writes: Among the great unknowns about the streaming wars is what collateral damage the shift will inflict. Specifically, are studios hastening the demise of their traditional networks which Disney, for example, is leveraging to launch Disney+ as they funnel resources and intellectual property directly to streaming, robbing from Mickey and Donald, potentially, to launch their space-age pal Buzz Lightyear? As former NBC exec Ted Harbert told me, the streaming strategy represents "a pretty serious rejiggering of the business model." Keep reading...
| | Lowry reviews "Irishman," "Harriet," and "Terminator"
Brian Lowry writes: "The Irishman" hits theaters this weekend, and to answer the big questions: Yes, it's very good; no, the de-aging process employed isn't distracting or creepy; and no, it didn't need to be 3 1/2 hours long, as Netflix, hungry for an Oscar contender, essentially allowed director Martin Scorsese to release his director's cut
"Harriet," meanwhile, is a fairly dutiful screen biography of Harriet Tubman featuring a knockout performance by Cynthia Erivo. On the downside, in their desire to make Tubman's "superhero origin story," the filmmakers have in places somewhat awkwardly Hollywood-ized the film.
The other big weekend release is "Terminator: Dark Fate," which I liked somewhat better than the mixed reviews...
"Frozen II" expects big box office debut | | Brian Lowry writes: Although six years have passed, "Frozen" apparently remains red hot, with projections that the animated sequel "Frozen II" will open to $100 million or more in the U.S., per Variety, when it hits theaters in time for Thanksgiving...
Pallotta adds: Is it just me or does it feel like "Frozen II" is flying a bit under the radar? Maybe it's because Disney+ is getting all the spotlight or because Disney has already made a gazillion dollars this year, but with Disney's stacked lineup this year I almost forgot about "Frozen II."
FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR
-- Kevin Hart trolled "The Rock" for Halloween and it was hilarious, Lisa Respers France reports...
-- One more from Lisa: Lupita Nyong'o revived her character Red from "Us" for Halloween Horror Nights...
-- Legendary director Martin Scorsese shares his picks for the "Scariest Movies of All Time..." (Daily Beast)
-- Discovery Channel has ordered a new reality show called "Man v. Bear." Get the grizzly details from THR's Kimberly Nordyke... (THR)
| | | Thanks for reading! Email me your feedback here. See you tomorrow... | | | |
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