From the Beast’s media desk |
Welcome to this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
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EXCLUSIVE — CAAN’T TOUCH THIS: It’s become a big guessing game in Hollywood circles—who is getting what and how much following the sale of TPG’s majority stake of Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to French luxury goods mogul François-Henri Pinault in a reported $7 billion valuation. A Financial Times report over the weekend said the talent agency’s top staff are in line to pocket more than $200 million. That could be a major payday for co-chairs Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane, and Richard Lovett, as well as big agents like Maha Dakhil, who just so happens to represent Salma Hayek, who is married to none other than Pinault. But five current and former CAA staffers, many of whom anxiously await word of how much equity they can cash out, told Confider they are “pissed” over internal chatter that, unlike their higher-ups, they are getting stiffed and will only be able to monetize 10 to 15 percent of their equity—with the rest being rolled into the new entity. “It’s getting ugly,” one former CAA executive told Confider. “People are extremely mad. This is equity you’ve earned.” While a final decision on the payout has yet to be announced, those with equity are already considering their legal options. “It's so demoralizing and gross,” another equity holder, who took a reduction in their salary in exchange for that equity, told Confider. “We made them all this money, and they are faking that they care on the picket lines, protesting the greed of the studio bosses, and meantime they are taking people’s prime earning years and now we can’t monetize our equity.” Meetings with top agents at CAA are expected to take place this week with former employees expecting to learn more about the equity plan in the next week or two. A rep for CAA declined to comment.
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EXCLUSIVE — MURDOCH WINDFALL: It’s not just the Trump book industry that’s heating up: Confider has learned that two major Rupert Murdoch-related projects are in the works just as two new books are due to hit shelves. New Yorker legend Ken Auletta has teamed up with producer and director Susan Lacy, who previously helmed PBS’ American Masters series, to work on a Murdoch documentary. Auletta profiled Murdoch in 1995 and says the doc may be accompanied by a New Yorker piece and that he is hopeful about getting access despite Murdoch’s response to the last profile. “When the piece came out, he was not happy,” Auletta told Confider. “I’m trying to get cooperation on the theory you want to hear everyone’s side of the story.” Meantime Vanity Fair writer Gabriel Sherman, who wrote the Roger Ailes book, The Loudest Voice in the Room, has signed a new book deal following his April cover story, “Inside Rupert Murdoch’s Succession Drama.” The Murdoch book is Sherman’s first since inking a deal to write about New York’s handling of the COVID outbreak—a book that ultimately never materialized. Next week, Michael Wolff will release his Murdoch/Fox book, titled The Fall, which is curiously being marketed differently in the U.S. than in the U.K. and Australia. The U.S. cover screams its subtitle, The End of Fox News and the Murdoch Dynasty, while across the pond and downunder, the book features an entirely different cover. Instead of merely text on this edition’s cover, a photo of Murdoch is accompanied by a shorter subtitle: The End of the Murdoch Empire. Wolff has been desperately trying to gin up interest in his book online by teasing a few oddly specific revelations. “What’s Sean Hannity packing in his briefcase? Find out in THE FALL,” he tweeted last week. Before that he teased: “Want to know whose face was on each sheet of Lachlan Murdoch’s toilet paper roll? Sure, you do.” The tweets have received remarkably little or no engagement at all. The other Murdoch book due out later this year is Brian Stelter’s Network of Lies: The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy, the follow-up to his bestseller Hoax, due out Nov. 14.
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EXCLUSIVE — ROSE & THE ROOFERS: Charlie Rose knows a good story when he sees one. The disgraced TV host, who just last month told Confider about his plans for a media comeback, was having breakfast Wednesday at Harry Cipriani restaurant inside The Sherry-Netherland hotel on the Upper East Side when he ran into former Vanity Fair editor-at-large Hamilton South, who is now vice chairman of Standard Industries, a glamorous roofing company that recently earned a buzzy profile at the front of the New York Times Styles section. According to Confider’s spywitness, Rose, who lives at the hotel, told South that he enjoyed the profile, which detailed how the roofing company’s co-CEOs David Winter and David Millstone came to invest in media companies such as Puck, Airmail, and Pushkin Industries. Rose did not reply to a request for comment this time, but when we last spoke with him, he said, “This is an interesting time in the affairs of the world, and I hope to be part of the conversation.” A rep for Standard Industries declined to comment.
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EXCLUSIVE — NYT SPORTS HITS THE BENCH: Midtown Manhattan’s gray, gloomy weather on Monday seemed to reflect the sentiment among many staffers at The New York Times on the day it finally shuttered its sports desk. Dozens of Times unionized staffers marked the finale with a rally outside the Times Building, donning red shirts (some with the Times Guild logo) and accompanied by a full-brass band jockeying their instruments to “When the Saints Go Marching In.” “These two departments could have co-existed, The Athletic and the Times,” Bill Baker, the head of the Times Guild, told Confider. “Sports jobs are union jobs. They purchased The Athletic with a goal in mind… so we believe that this was their intention all along.” (A Times spokesperson maintained the decision was announced in July just after the plan was made.) The rally featured multiple sports reporters protesting the paper’s decision, including David Waldstein and Jenny Vrentas, who started new roles on different desks today. “We won’t allow this to be a precedent,” Vrentas said. “That’s why we’re fighting it so strongly that, you know, union work stays union work,” she said, referring to how non-unionized staffers at The Athletic will cover the sports journalism previously handled by the paper’s guild-covered reporters. The rally followed a morning email sent by publisher A.G. Sulzberger punting follow-up questions from sports writers to the masthead and the Times’ labor relations department, both of which he oversees. “This transition has been handled haphazardly and we want to make sure that people have every support and guarantee necessary to be able to have a long career here at the Times,” Vrentas said. “AG and members of the masthead have had a series of meetings with the members of the Sports desk to discuss the decision in detail and answer questions,” a Times spokesperson wrote in an email. “Members of the masthead, HR and our labor team are happy to answer any remaining questions.” The guild filed a grievance over the Times’ decision in July that was rejected, and the guild has moved the case to arbitration. The end comes full-circle to 2017 when the Times’ sports desk wrote about The Athletic hiring up sports reporters “from your local newspaper,” seemingly portending its own demise in the lede: “In a couple of years, once The Athletic has completed its breakneck expansion, perhaps that newspaper’s sports section will no longer exist.”
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WE HEAR WHISPERS: MSNBC’s weekend lineup is set for a shakeup involving Symone Sanders, Alicia Menendez, and Michael Steele… The Messenger’s owner Jimmy Finkelstein sent a memo to staff last week reassuring them that everything is going just great after Confider reported on the departure of key execs as others look to leave amid concerns over “Mad Dog” boss Richard Beckman.
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IN PLAIN SIGHT: Nancy Pelosi, Donna Brazile, and David Rubenstein at Walter Isaacson’s book party, toasting his Elon Musk biography at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian in D.C. on Sunday night… Fox News has completely ignored MAGA Rep. Lauren Boebert’s public groping and vaping—which she initially lied about—that got her booted from a Denver performance of Beetlejuice, not mentioning it once on its airwaves. But if she were a Democrat, we all know what would happen… After career nerd Nate Silver made reference to Sen. John Fetterman’s casual dress style in an extremely both sidesist tweet, the hoodie-and-shorts-clad Democrat responded by dunking on Silver… And for the love of all that’s holy, can someone please show Alan Dershowitz how to customize the thumbnails of his blog posts? This is getting kinda gross.
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MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK |
—Kristen Welker’s debut turn as moderator of Meet the Press demonstrated her inquisitive skills as a reporter, but they were still no match for the walking word salad that is Donald Trump. Read our dive into her first episode here.
—After the Rock Hall ditched Jann Wenner over his ridiculous comments about Black and female artists, Rolling Stone threw him squarely under the bus Monday with a brief statement distancing the magazine from its founder. Read about that here. —Joe Berkowitz spent a week watching NewsNation, the upstart cable channel billing itself as a “centrist” alternative to CNN and Fox. Suffice to say, as per usual, anything branding itself as “centrist” in 2023 is anything but. Read his findings here.
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—“The damage to [Russell] Brand’s current career may be limited by his decision to spend recent years building a fanbase based around rightwing talking points and Covid vaccine skepticism,” smartly notes The Guardian’s Jim Waterson. More here.
—Comedian and former Daily Show correspondent Hasan Minhaj admitted to The New Yorker that he has embellished and/or fabricated many of the personal anecdotes that have become the staples of his on-stage career. Read the truly wild profile here.
—Buckingham Palace spin doctors were allowed by British TV channels to censor and dictate coverage of King Charles’ coronation and, in an “Orwellian” move, had the right to retrospectively ban footage post-broadcast. More here.
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***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?*** |
While Fox won’t even briefly mention Lauren Boebert’s vape-and-gropefest on its air, the right-wing outrage-industrial complex can’t stop from shrieking hysterically about the true scandal of our time: the Senate’s dress code. In more than a dozen separate segments across Fox News and Fox Business Network, anchors and pundits alike have gnashed their teeth over the prospect of Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) wearing hoodies and shorts on the chamber floor. Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum, for instance, was simply beside herself over the lack of “reverence” and “decorum” taking place. Karl Rove fumed over “how pathetic [Fetterman’s] attitude is and how pathetic the majority leader is to appease him.” Fox & Friends co-host (for now) Brian Kilmeade complained that Fetterman “looks like he’s auditioning for The Incredible Hulk” before saying this new rule change “should make Republicans push more and more to get their majority leader in place and bring everything back.” Elsewhere, former Fox star Trish Regan revealed the ridiculous extremes the right-wing infotainment industry would go in whipping up rage over this trivial exercise. “Schumer just got rid of the Senate DRESS CODE so John Fetterman can freely wear his hoodies and gym shorts to work,” she tweeted on Monday. “No more jacket and tie required. TYRANNY of the MINORITY Strikes Again. Pathetic.”
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Confider will be back next week with more saucy scooplets. In the meantime, subscribe here and send us questions, complaints, or tips here.
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https://elink.thedailybeast.com/oc/500739748f88e31ae715d889ji0m1.h9a/76a98ca7 |
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