THE LATEST ARTICLES
NEWSLETTERS
Mark Lazarus
Dylan Byers August 20, 2025
The MSNBC rebrand may be puzzling and endlessly mockable, but branding is the least pressing of Versant’s problems. First, they have to figure out how to sustain a profitable news organization without NBC, while gussying up the network for a potential future buyer.
david ellison
Dylan Byers August 15, 2025
Ellison has embarked on a marathon charm offensive to convey optimism toward his self-appointed quixotic task of scaling Paramount, taking on Netflix, and saving Hollywood. But, yes, there will be cuts—especially at CBS News, the least glamorous and most challenged corner of his new entertainment empire.
Ruthless Podcast
Dylan Byers August 13, 2025
As legacy companies bleed out and the uneven creator economy spills forth, the behemoths will be increasingly keen to eschew their own talent to partner with the entrepreneurs. A flurry of recent small deals presage the landscape.
David Ellison
Dylan Byers August 8, 2025
Media coverage of David Ellison’s post-merger victory tour has largely focused on his plans for CBS News, looming synergies at Paramount, and his relationship with Trump. But all this may understate the true scale of Ellison’s ambition: to transfuse New Paramount with his dad’s tech and turn a legacy creative business into… a platform.


robert thomson
Dylan Byers August 6, 2025
Earnings season has thrown the disparate fortunes of The New York Times Company and Dow Jones into sharp relief with the worsening situation at The Washington Post. Hey Gemini, how many paywalled newsgathering businesses does this country actually need?
Emma Tucker
Dylan Byers July 30, 2025
Not only has Emma Tucker completely revitalized the staid Journal with her suffer-no-fools attitude and upscale tabloid instincts, but her strategic bet to repopulate the D.C. newsroom (moving out a generation of retiring mentors in favor of pot-stirrers) has the paper eating the Times’s lunch in the second Trump era.
Jeff Shell
Dylan Byers July 25, 2025
While the media universe overanalyzes the free speech implications of the tediously drawn out Paramount-Skydance merger—the Colbert-Carr-‘South Park’ of it all—CBS rank and file are pondering a simpler question: Who’s gonna fix the evening news?
Rupert Murdoch
Dylan Byers July 23, 2025
After successfully shaking down Disney and Paramount, Trump has targeted ‘The Wall Street Journal,’ whose proprietor may not roll over so easily.


Stephen Colbert
Dylan Byers July 18, 2025
News and notes on the latest media industry talking points: The timing, optics, and insider drama following CBS’s abrupt decision to cancel ‘The Late Show’ as the Paramount deal approaches the finish line; and what to make of Substack’s $1.1 billion valuation in a round led by The Chernin Group.
Bari Weiss
Dylan Byers July 16, 2025
Times defector Bari Weiss has become everybody’s favorite center-right public intellectual: principled, pro-Israel, not about to get pushed around by the progressive mob, and a damn good hang. So when she sat down with David Ellison (and lawyers) at Sun Valley last week, it set off the usual rumors that her Free Press might be Skydance’s next acquisition. But is it sound business or just savvy virtue signaling in a Trump 2.0 world?
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