Confider #97 - Jimmy Finkelstein’s ‘Brooding’ in Florida After The Messenger’s Collapse

Confider is going on hiatus after today’s issue, but you can still find all of The Daily Beast’s media scoops and analysis on the site at this link.

Top Items

• EXCLUSIVE — Insult to Injury for Finkelstein at The Messenger

LIKE A ROLLING STONE: After Rolling Stone’s Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman announced on Friday that he’s stepping down on March 1 (he’ll remain a contributing writer), another staffer of the legendary music magazine took to X to reveal his departure. Entertainment editor Marlow Stern wrote on Monday that he, too, is leaving the outlet due to a “change in editorial strategy.” (Stern was previously a senior entertainment editor at The Daily Beast, while Shachtman was a previous editor-in-chief.) “I hope the shift in direction doesn't affect other people,” Stern noted in his post. Stern told Confider that he wasn’t given much of an explanation regarding his firingon Monday morning, saying it came as a surprise after working on Super Bowl coverage late into Sunday. “I have to imagine that, due to Noah leaving before me, that says what it says,” Stern said. His last day at the magazine is today. According to The New York Times, Shachtman and chief executive Gus Wenner disagreed over the reinvention of the magazine, which Shachtman wanted to turn into a “hit factory” of stories. It’s unclear if the editorial “shift”—back to the brand’s “historical mission to celebrate the best of pop culture,” according to Shachtman’s tweets—will lead to further exits from the storied outlet, which was nominated for an Emmy last year and won a National Magazine Award under Shactman’s tenure. Penske Media did not respond to a request for comment.

EXCLUSIVE —HOLLYWOOD TALES: Our esteemed pal Lloyd Grove got an exclusive interview with Oscar-winning filmmaker Edward Zwick ahead of the release of his new memoir, Hits, Flops, and Other Illusions: My Fortysomething Years in Hollywood. Among the many revelations in Zwick’s tell-all: Matthew Broderick and his mother Patricia Broderick had a tyrannical presence on and off the set of 1989’s Glory, which Zwick directed (“It was so traumatic for me,” the filmmaker tells Grove); and Harvey Weinstein tried to bully Zwick entirely out of his producer credits for Shakespeare in Love, the Best Picture winner in 1999 that Zwick spent years painstakingly developing. Zwick also dishes to Grove about his former mentor Woody Allen (“I don’t think it’s been proven to me enough that he’s the monster he’s been made out to be”) and shares his take on Barbie director Greta Gerwig’s big snub for this year’s Oscar directorial prize. Read the full scoop here.

TEST PATTERN: It isn’t just household names and big legacy brands that are getting hammered in the stark economic environment that media currently finds itself in. After 18 years, television industry trade outlet TVNewsCheck announced that it was “pressing pause” and halting publication for the foreseeable future. In what has become a broken record across the media landscape, the site blamed the “escalating challenges in the industry’s business environment” for the shutdown. “We are not immune to those challenges and have continuously adapted ourselves,” the site’s staff wrote, adding that their “cutting-edge conferences and webinars are second to none in the industry, enabling vital conversations and information sharing necessary for maintaining thriving businesses.” Hyping its weekly podcast Talking TV and the site’s original reporting on the broadcasting industry, the site said it was “exploring strategic options” to continue its efforts, which included expanding its premium content. While TVNewsCheck will stop updating its website and halt the publication of its newsletters and columns, the site will continue to hold its regular webinars and conferences for the time being.

Tips? We’re all ears: confider@thedailybeast.com

IN PLAIN SIGHT: CNN has gradually been cutting jobs behind the scenes, restructuring both its morning programming and its booking department. With the network taking a “drip, drip, drip” approach to job cuts amid speculation of mass layoffs down the road, as Semafor first reported, NewsNation trolled its cable news competitor with a job posting on LinkedIn, urging CNN employees to apply at the “centrist” network for a variety of roles… After former Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief John Avlon said goodbye to CNN after 13 years last week, it was reported that he could soon be running for Congress, though sources added that no final decision has been made and paperwork has yet to be filed.

MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK

—After Sean Hannity approvingly aired the vigilante group Guardian Angels dishing out a gang beating of a suspected “migrant shoplifter,” the Fox News star had to “set the record straight” on Thursday night when it was revealed that almost nothing the group’s leader Curtis Sliwa said about the beatdown was true. Read more here and here.

—After Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) claimed that a well-known right-wing media figure threatened to “destroy” him if he advanced immigration legislation before this year’s election, MAGA radio host Jesse Kelly boasted that he was the culprit. In the end, it wasn’t him. Perhaps the first hint was that Lanford said it was a “popular commentator” who made the threat. Read more here.

—The publisher of “Crazy Days and Nights” has spent years posting salacious and unconfirmed reports about A-Z-list celebrities—all while never disclosing the man behind the blog. Jared Holt latched onto court records to find out the true identity behind the internet’s “Enty Lawyer.” Read Holt’s dive into him here.

—Tucker Carlson’s self-hyped interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin proved he was ill-equipped to challenge the authoritarian leader, needing history spiel after history spiel. Still, the interview produced some news: Putin said he wants to send Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich home. Read our coverage here and here.

RECENT READS

—Radio host Carlos Frías filed a discrimination lawsuit against his former radio station last week, alleging they fired him for producing a radio show that was “very Latino”...in Miami. Read more about the case his attorney called “abhorrent” to The Washington Post here.

—Trevor Noah made a big splash when he launched his podcast last year, wanting to secure “A-list conversations.” But Spotify’s push for celebrity interviews may have him seeking an out, according to Semafor. Read about the rocky relationship here.

—The New Yorker’s Clare Malone took her magnifying glass to the media industry’s decimating start to the year, which included layoffs at publications big and small. Dive into her analysis on the media’s “extinction-level event” here.

***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***

After spending weeks bemoaning that the Super Bowl was a Deep State psy-op by Taylor Swift to destroyDonald Trump and start World War III, MAGA influencers and right-wing media had a normal one on Monday when Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce led the Kansas City Chiefs to yet another championship. Fox News, for instance, grumbled that the pop megastar was seen on television drinking a beer during the big game. “I find Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce insufferable, from the beer chugging thing from Taylor Swift—cool, everyone can do it, it's not that hard, Taylor, we've all done it!” Fox News pundit Lisa Marie Boothe groused. Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, meanwhile, worried about the influence Swift’s beer-chugging would have on kids before casting the singer as a shadowy figure. “What do we really know about this 34-year-old woman, and does she realize how young her audience is?” Faulkner rhetorically asked. In the end, though, it was serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, one of the top peddlers of the “Taylor Swift is an op” conspiracy theory, who came through with the most brain-dead take of them all. Posting a clip of Kelce’s victory speech, Johnson reacted by saying this was the end result of a “COVID Booster” and “Bud Light,” referencing Kelce’s endorsement of vaccines and MAGA’s hatred for the “woke” beer brand (despite Trump telling conservatives to give it a “second chance”). Apparently, Johnson’s message to his fans is if you drink Bud Light and get vaxxed you’ll win multiple Super Bowls and date the most famous woman in the world.

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