Greetings from Los Angeles, and welcome back to In the Room. In tonight’s edition, news and notes on all the latest D.C. newsroom developments, from The Washington Post’s grief-tainted executive editor search to Politico’s next great hope. Plus, some new stats on MSNBC’s post-election freefall.

Mentioned in this email: Jeff Bezos, John Harris, James Bennet, Matea Gold, Maggie Haberman, Mark Halperin, Cliff Levy, Chuck Todd, Pat McAfee, Lachlan Murdoch, Dasha Burns, Ben Smith, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Phil Rucker, Taylor Lorenz, and many more…

But first…

• 🍸 On the latest edition of The Grill Room, legendary media mogul Barry Diller joined me to debate the future of Comcast’s SpinCo, the pros and cons of Hollywood consolidation, and the fate of The Daily Beast. Plus, Barry shared his case for optimism in the new era of Trump and Elon. Follow The Grill Room on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 🎙️ Plus… I joined Peter Hamby on Puck’s flagship podcast, The Powers That Be, to unscramble the latest Washington Post editor murmurs and Taylor Lorenz drama, and also joined Tara Palmeri’s Somebody’s Gotta Win to take stock of how journalists are likely to cover Trump 2.0.
• Pod save cable?: YouTube says its viewers are watching more than 400 million hours of podcast videos monthly on living room devices, yet another data point for the increasing influence of podcasts in the news and culture space. Just a hunch, but with MSNBC and CNN in decline and suffering historic ratings lows, it seems likely that either network could pursue licensing deals with popular podcasters or shock jocks to simulcast their shows, similar to the deal ESPN struck with Pat McAfee. (Alas, this would represent a full-circle return to Imus’s days on MSNBC—a defenestration that, pivotally, paved the way for Joe and Mika.) Think “The Bulwark on MSNBC,” or something to that effect. It would save them on production costs and probably even boost the audience. Maybe it’s worth the risk. Sure, the Pod Save America show never worked on HBO, but it might work a whole lot better on MSNBC.

• ‘The Five’ at 4: Meanwhile, on a not-unrelated note, Fox News continues to thrive in the post-election season. The latest data point: The Five, the network’s most popular show, has averaged more than 4 million viewers every single day since November 6. That is nearly 4x the current average audience for MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and 10x the current average audience for CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
• Shitshow at the fuck factory: Finally, as you’ve no doubt heard by now, Rupert Murdoch has failed in his bid to amend the family trust and give Lachlan full control of his media empire. As the Times first reported this week, Nevada probate commissioner Ed Gorman concluded that the father-son duo acted in “bad faith” in trying to change the terms of the trust, which grant equal control of Fox Corp. and News Corp. to Rupert’s four eldest children after his death. Lachlan’s siblings—James, Elisabeth, and Prudence—are more liberal, and both Rupert and Lachlan seem to fear that they would seek to undo Fox News’s right-wing editorial posture. Rupert will now appeal. If he loses, it’s possible he and Lachlan could try to buy out the other siblings. If that fails, it’s possible Rupert could sell the assets.

  Before we go, I’d be remiss not to highlight the most incredible detail from the legal proceedings, via the Times: “Mr. Murdoch’s children had started secretly discussing the public-relations strategy for their father’s death in April 2023. Setting off these discussions was the episode of the HBO drama Succession, the commissioner wrote, ‘where the patriarch of the family dies, leaving his family and business in chaos.’ The episode prompted Elisabeth’s representative to the trust, Mark Devereux, to write a ‘Succession’ memo’ intended to help avoid a real-life repeat.”

Now, on to Washington…

In any event, Dasha’s move is indicative of the lame-duck season recalibration of the political media industry at large. By Dasha’s own admission, the move from rising broadcast star to digital bureau chief is “unconventional.” In a brief conversation on Wednesday, she acknowledged that she was “not a D.C. cat,” had previously been averse to moving from Brooklyn to Washington, and that she had not been anticipating this kind of role after years on various campaign trails. She might have ended up in Washington either way: The initial post-Biden job offer from NBC News, I’m told, was as a congressional reporter. Instead, she opted to “see the [Trump] story through” at the White House, and to do so with a more august title for an organization she said was “on the forefront of what journalism can look like.” (She and Harris are peas in a pod…)

Dasha, largely an unknown in the industry, was certainly a rising star inside NBC News, and several people at 30 Rock and 400 North Cap texted me on Wednesday to bemoan her departure, which they attributed to bad management. To her credit, Dasha may have been young enough to understand that television is no longer the be-all and end-all of political journalism. “It’s what I grew up in, but I want to be as forward-looking as possible,” she told me. “I think it’s now more important than ever for individual journalists to be able to flex all of those separate muscles. I can write for digital, I can do audio, I can do television. I want to be ready for the future.” (Again, the Harris gene…)

Inarguably, it’s never been easier for a young TV journalist to make that jump. The 2024 election, which news executives had hoped would reinvigorate anemic ratings, ultimately served as a punctuation mark on the familiar story of the industry’s decline. The days since then have been especially dispiriting: MSNBC, the primary theater for Dasha’s reporting, has lost half of its audience since November 5, and is now watched by an average of fewer than half a million people, and just 43,000 people below the age of 55. As the business gets smaller, the earnings potential for sub-marquee talent across the cable landscape shrinks with it. Furthermore, MSNBC’s possible future as a liberal opinion pure play—post Comcast spinoff—could have further restricted her real estate to NBC News, where she’d have to fight for the occasional three-minute package on Today or Nightly News against late-middle-age, sharp-elbowed, grinfucking survivors, all of whom speak the lingua franca of teamwork by day while fearfully texting their agents after the second glass of wine each night. So, why not take a chance on a bigger role at a digital outfit?

Harris added that Burns reminded him of another onetime Politico star, Maggie Haberman—heavy cake—describing them both as “reporters who were put on earth to drive the big story.” Politico plans to announce additional hires in the weeks ahead, including, as I’ve reported, an executive producer to oversee its Playbook franchise, which seems to be evolving away from a key-man-risk–heavy product—you know, the sort of vehicle that could be weakened if the authors leave to start their own competitor, or get drawn into a sordid legal scandal—and toward, well, we’ll soon find out.

In any event, it will not be veteran managing editor Matea Gold, who on Monday opted to end her 12-year run at the paper and join The New York Times, where she will serve as Washington editor. Will wants a change agent, and Matea had always been a long shot for the position by virtue of being a veteran, as I noted last week. Indeed, the fact that she was even under consideration may have simply been an attempt to placate her fellow Post veterans. Either way, Matea never got to meet with Bezos, who has historically held in-person interviews with executive editor candidates.

To that end, Matea’s departure to the Post’s longtime rival was yet another blow to morale for the already dispirited newsroom—“devastating,” per Post columnist Karen Tumulty,” and “a profound loss,” according to national editor Phil Rucker. Meanwhile, many other Post journalists now seem to be loose in the saddle and considering their options. When asked if there were any indications of whom the next editor might be, one senior staffer replied only, “No idea. Everyone is in a state of grief.”

Grief is the operative word here. The Post, after all, has been in a largely uninterrupted fugue state since the late spring when, you know, Lewis defenestrated Sally Buzbee, lost his top choice for editor to an internal rebellion, and nearly saw his own epitaph written in the process. As they wait and mourn, however, the Posties would be wise to cue up Andrew Ross Sorkin’s hourlong interview with Bezos from last week’s DealBook Summit. During their chat, Bezos acknowledged that he had more than a few ideas about how to fix his beloved paper.

Then, the conversation inevitably turned to Bezos’s other lines of business—chairing the $2 trillion-plus market cap Amazon and colonizing the galaxy via Blue Origin, among them. Post insiders may want to ask themselves: When Bezos hurtles through the solar system, envisioning the future of his business interests and mankind, is Cliff Levy the face of innovation he sees on the moon?