THE END OF GAWKER? Now that the question of who will own Gawker Media has been answered -- congrats, Univision! -- attention is shifting to whether flagship website gawker.com will survive after the sale is officially approved today. A source briefed on Univision’s plans confirmed that the company is “deliberating” on what to do with the site -- Keep it going? Kill it? Sell it? -- and that a decision is expected “sooner rather than later.”
Gawker may be the namesake of the blog empire Nick Denton founded in 2002, and which he lost ownership of on Tuesday when Univision acquired it in a bankruptcy auction prompted by Hulk Hogan’s $140 million sex-tape lawsuit. But gawker.com isn’t as good for business as other brands within the portfolio, like Gizmodo and Deadspin. And it’s saddled with baggage not only from the Hogan fiasco, but other coverage-related controversies that have arisen over the years. “No one wants Gawker itself. The winner will probably shut it down,” a source told the New York Post earlier this week (http://nyp.st/2btRp3V).
Meanwhile, Morning Media heard a rumor from a well-placed source yesterday that an expected joint bid from Penske Media Corporation and Vox Media fell through in part because the two companies couldn’t agree on what to do with gawker.com. But two sources involved in the discussions said that wasn’t true. One source said the two companies were “in alignment,” while another said the talks about making a joint offer never got far enough that the gawker.com conundrum was even addressed. (The companies can’t comment on matters related to the sale due to an NDA.)
A post on gawker.com by J.K. Trotter acknowledges that the website’s fate “remains unclear” (http://bit.ly/2b2vYp9). "I think we're all pretty pessimistic about the site existing," an insider told CNNMoney, which also reported that Denton confirmed to staff yesterday that he will be leaving the company after the sale closes (http://cnnmon.ie/2bjUbIl). A Gawker Media source familiar with Denton’s thinking told POLITICO Denton feels that he has succeeded in protecting his employees' jobs and getting the company to a "safe harbor."
As Peter Sterne reports, “Gawker Media editorial staff want Univision to continue operating Gawker.com and plan to make their case to their new boss -- Isaac Lee, Univision's chief news, entertainment and digital officer -- when he visits the office on Friday. Gawker Media's other sites also plan to publish statements of solidarity with Gawker.com (http://politi.co/2bfVYzV).” More on Gawker and Univision below, but first...
WELCOME BACK TO MORNING MEDIA!: It’s about that time of year when people start saying things like, “Can you believe it’s almost the end of August already?” I have a few late-summer jaunts left. What about you? Tips: jpompeo@politico.com / Twitter: @joepompeo / MM archives and email-subscription button: http://politi.co/1PdFrwQ.
UNIVISION’S ‘HANDCUFFS’ -- The FT: “Univision has … kept its spending in the low hundreds of millions. … [V]irtually all of Univision’s $2bn revenue comes from traditional TV advertising and cable subscriptions. The sagging shares of others in those businesses … have delayed Univision’s public listing, now reported to be happening later this year. Its debt/earnings ratio still exceeds six times, and its total valuation will not be far off what was paid for it in 2007. At least investors can be sure that it will remain cautious with its capital. It has no other choice.” http://on.ft.com/2aWXSre
Jeremy Barr in AdAge: “Gawker Media Group ... offers scale. … Univision and [its flagship web property] Fusion are focused right now on courting advertisers. ... But it's hard to know whether the addition of Gawker to the portfolio will make a material difference in how agencies and clients view Fusion -- and Univision -- as an advertising partner. … Here's another theory about the purchase, from a media executive who has been closely watching the company for years: it's all about TV. … Univision could potentially tap Gawker Media's brands to produce content for the Fusion TV channel.” http://bit.ly/2b0HyqF
MUST READS:
-- “Present at the Creation: The never-told-before story of the meeting that led to the creation of ISIS, as explained by an Islamic State insider” http://atfp.co/2bex43S [Foreign Policy]
-- “Scenes From the Terrifying, Already Forgotten JFK Airport Shooting That Wasn’t” http://nym.ag/2bf2o2e [New York]
-- “20 Big Questions about the Future of Humanity” http://bit.ly/2aWh0Wa [Scientific American]
TRUMP’S NEW CAMPAIGN CHIEF -- “The Trump campaign’s relationship with the mainstream media is likely to get worse,” Hadas Gold reports on POLITICO. “Despite assurances from Donald Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, that they were going to reassess the campaign's blacklist of reporters, the official hiring of Breitbart Chairman Stephen K. Bannon as CEO of the Trump campaign is a sign that the campaign is unlikely to change its combative way with the media.” http://politi.co/2bB3jMy
Ben Smith: “Trump’s campaign has always been, to a degree greater even than the usual model campaign, almost entirely a media product: Trump on TV, Trump at rallies, Trump yelling on Twitter. And Breitbart is an exemplar, to a far greater degree than even the old partisan journalism, of a pure and focused ‘media activism,’ in which the technical tools of journalism are turned to clear political ends.” http://bzfd.it/2aWZv88
Former NPR CEO Ken Stern for Vanity Fair: “Trump is a first-time candidate who has talked about professionalizing his campaign, and yet he has hired a media bomb-thrower with no experience on the trail. But on another level, it is no surprise, since for years there has been a political symbiosis between Trump, Bannon, and Breitbart Media, the news organization that Bannon has led for the last four years. In truth, Bannon and Breitbart Media were Trump before Trump, creating the political philosophy and the political army in waiting that has been the engine for the candidate’s astonishing rise in American politics.” http://bit.ly/2be9xRf
THE BIGGER ‘TRUMPBART’ QUESTION: Everyone seems to agree that bringing on Bannon means the campaign will become neither more “professional” nor less confrontational (though Bannon’s considerable political skills have been well noted). Instead, all the smart takes are pushing the story of this new relationship -- “Trumpbart” -- past the election, and asking whether Vanity Fair’s Sarah Ellison was right when she suggested that the Trump campaign was turning into pre-launch publicity for a new, superpowered right-wing media entity (http://bit.ly/1Q6rRvI). Reports that ousted Fox News CEO Roger Ailes was coaching Trump in advance of the debates had emboldened that speculation (though the campaign has denied the reports), and yesterday’s Bannon news added yet more fuel to that fire.
But if Trump should lose, the piece we haven’t yet read is: what does it all mean for the Republican party after this election? With or without a powerful new media junta representing the wing of the party that fueled Trump’s primary win, how will the Republicans handle 2020 differently if they lose the White House again? Can the vocal Trump base be grown, or will it have to be somehow brought into the fold with the rest of the Republican base? The GOP’s last, successful rebuilding effort launched the Reagan administration and held for three (nonconsecutive) Bush terms. Roger Ailes was a major player in building that coalition -- and Bannon has been a master at deconstructing it. In other words, this storyline is one we will be watching for years to come.
MUST WATCH -- CNN anchor Brianna Keilar: “You guys are down.” Trump adviser Michael Cohen: “Says who?” http://bit.ly/2b2CQmn
-- “I think I unraveled her,” Cohen told Yahoo News. http://yhoo.it/2bufvvh
KUSHNER’S ‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’ -- There’s been a critical mass of Jared Kushner profiles lately (The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker …) ever since the press-shy real estate scion and New York Observer owner emerged as a key figure in his father-in-law Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Morning Media got a sneak peek yesterday at the latest of these, which will hit stands in the October issue of Esquire. Here’s the part that will make media gossips squeal: Writer Vicky Ward -- an occasional character in the pages of the “once venerable” (her words!) Observer over the years -- reveals that she was the third reporter asked, at Kushner’s request, to pursue a now-infamous attempted hit-piece (http://bit.ly/29woc8n) about developer Richard Mack.
The nut graph: “Over the past year, Jared Kushner’s profile has risen alongside the mind-bending trajectory of his father-in-law’s presidential bid. … And yet for all that Jared has helped Trump, there is a sense among Jared’s friends and business associates that he sees the gold-plated vision of a Trump White House as the ultimate step in a carefully plotted ascent to redemption, one that began when his father’s scandal tarnished the family name. … Just as Kennedy’s father was forced to yield his ambitions to his sons’ generation after uttering controversial remarks during World War II, so too did the scandal that sent Charles Kushner to prison open the door for his sons -- and especially for Jared -- to launch their charm offensive on society at a very early age.” The piece is set to be live online after 7 a.m. here: http://bit.ly/2boW5KK
SOUND BITES:
-- “I hope that Univision will demonstrate its appetite for ‘honest, fearless journalism’ by not closing Gawker.” http://bit.ly/2begYb2 [Hamilton Nolan]
-- “What we're seeing today is the birth of Trump News Network post-November 8 - not the rebooting of his campaign.” http://bit.ly/2aX7emU [Edward Luce]
-- “The election of 2016 will not only be taught in history, sociology, and political science classes - it will be a case study in journalism schools for years to come.” http://bit.ly/2bz4Ak6 [Dan Rather]
-- "They have done an amazing job. Buzzfeed, this is the new media." http://bit.ly/2b1gfXG [Glenn Beck]
TRONC TALK -- Remember last week when we floated a bit of gossip about a supposed recent meeting between executives from tronc (formerly Tribune Publishing) and executives from Gannett (which has been trying to buy Tribune/tronc for months)? Surprise! “Gannett Co. has privately sweetened its bid for Tronc Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, hoping to overcome resistance to a sale from the parent of the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “Details of the new overture, which comes after Tronc rejected a prior bid of $15 a share, couldn’t be learned. Tronc is expected to respond by the end of the week, some of the people said, indicating that Gannett’s long pursuit of the storied newspaper chain may soon come to a head.” http://on.wsj.com/2behG8y
REVOLVING DOOR: New York Times Sunday Book Review editor Pamela Paul will now also oversee the culture section’s daily book reviews. “We are the last daily newspaper in America with a free-standing books section,” executive editor Dean Baquet told staff yesterday in a memo. “It will be Pamela’s job to think about how our coverage should change and, of course, how it should not change. … Above all, we believe we have a significant opportunity to expand the audience for our books coverage.” The Times recently shot down a report saying there were talks about killing the Sunday Book Review. Full memo: http://bit.ly/2b1UsSi
Elsewhere:
-- New York Times seeks “dynamic product leader with experience building consumer facing products worth paying for at scale.” http://bit.ly/2aZYUhl [LinkedIn]
-- Also at the Times, Alexander Fury, formerly of vogue.com and The Independent, has been named chief fashion critic for T magazine.
-- Former Buzzfeed exec Eric Harris is joining streaming-video service Cheddar as COO. http://bit.ly/2aW1WIf [Mic]
TERRY MCDONNELL ON DAVID CARR -- “He was gifted and haunted, and you saw that right off. … Although he never let me win, I sometimes got the feeling that he was trying to give me a break. Good reporters can always make you think that. Another part of David’s charm was the careful curiosity that always defines a great reporter. …
“I told David I might write about him, we met for an early dinner in the West Village. It was July 2014, seven months before his death, and he looked drained, thinner than I’d ever seen him, but he wasn’t acting tired. … He was mocking us sitting there about to dish wisdom over expensive pasta, poking at the self-importance of hacks who can’t help showing off even if, as David liked to say, they’ve been phoning it in from a great distance for a long, long time. He loved being a journalist but the journalism was more important and he knew that.”
That’s from an excerpt of the magazine legend’s new memoir, “The Accidental Life.” You can read the whole thing over at CJR: http://bit.ly/2bsVpS7
NEWS FROM DOWN UNDER -- The New York Times reports: “The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and their sister publications at Fairfax Media have been among the most powerful voices in Australia for more than 150 years, shaping public opinion on politics, exposing shady business practices and targeting vast criminal operations. … But Fairfax’s newspapers now face a diminished future, with company executives even discussing whether to stop printing The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on weekdays. If they do, it would signal a new low in the decline of the global newspaper business, the radical retreat of centuries-old, mainstream metropolitan newspapers with national influence. …
“The weakening of independent voices like The Herald also leaves the Australian market increasingly dominated by the partisan agenda of News Corporation, which owns the country’s top three newspapers by weekday circulation. The struggles at Fairfax represent an especially satisfying victory for News Corporation, run by the homegrown billionaire Rupert Murdoch.”
http://nyti.ms/2aWf8Nn
SPEAKING OF WHICH -- During an address in the newsroom of Australia’s Daily Telegraph, News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson “underscored the importance of the printed newspaper at a time … when ‘lesser media companies are contemplating’ an exit from print,” according to a report in The Australian. Thomson: “There is a vast cauldron of crap content out there. It’s ladled out liberally by distributors and recyclists who are not environmentally sound but are the news equivalent of strip miners. That is why we have to work so hard to protect our intellectual property and assert ... our values and the primacy of acts of creation.” (If you’re feeling a pang of deja vu, don’t be alarmed -- Thomson often gives some variation of these remarks this during company earnings calls and media conferences.) http://bit.ly/2bo8QGE
SOUNDTRACK: The War on Drugs, “Red Eyes” http://bit.ly/1e1t52z
EXTRAS:
-- Is Jeff Zucker the future of Fox News under James and Lachlan Murdoch? http://bit.ly/2b58fX6 [THR]
-- “The inimitable flacking genius of Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson” http://wapo.st/2bne85z [WaPo]
-- Larry Wilmore says Comedy Central didn’t promote his show as much as it should have. http://bit.ly/2buhHmg [Fast Company]
-- The millennial TV network Pivot is going dark. http://bit.ly/2bIfoRl [AdAge]
-- NPR is ditching online comments and encouraging its audience to engagement via social media instead. http://n.pr/2b4iT0l [NPR]