Media

1. Ashlee Vance launches startup
2. Ex-Reuters EiC wrote Pulitzer report
3. This American Life faces staff cuts
4. Telegraph bidder wants it to be nicer
5. WaPo traffic tanks
6. Todd to exit NBC
7. Melania Trump starts doc press tour

I’ve asked Ankler CEO Janice Min to guest-write today’s introduction from Los Angeles, where the horrifying fires have displaced many of our readers and friends. — Ben Smith

Tragedies reveal the system’s weaknesses, and debates around what government officials should have done will rage long after the fires. But the catastrophe also exposed a ravaged Los Angeles media ecosystem. In my multiple text chains was the constant question: What’s the best place to get information?

The answers were a hodgepodge of new apps and websites (Watch Duty! Genasys! Wildfire Viewer!), Google Docs shared by neighbors about what burned down, rogue drone footage, and Instagram Reels.

Not once did anyone cite a Los Angeles media outlet, save for old-school local broadcast news channels, primarily watched through their websites — a heroic resource for seeing footage, catching the latest and hearing press conferences.

But people desperate for information eventually will go rogue: To learn what happened to their homes in the now-destroyed Pacific Palisades, people snuck in past police barriers. One friend offered a bounty for anyone who could deliver footage of his house. My husband rode his bike into the Palisades wearing an N95 mask and took apocalyptic footage to confirm to friends that their homes had burned down. Our old place, where we had lived for 10 years and raised our children, was gone too.

As the fire now spreads into Encino and Brentwood, where I now live, and new gusts of wind are coming, mistaken evacuation notices sent through phones have rattled residents. Many remain unsure about what water is safe to drink, and vigilante homeowners are chasing arsonists and looters through a blur of rumors, all while social media apps like conspiracy hub X overflow with ill-informed analysis and speculation.

As haze, ash and destruction remain, the decline of standard-bearer legacy media — in a metropolis with a newspaper whose series of hapless owners long ago destroyed its audience (despite excellent work from its reporters), and the rise of niche-ification (including that of The Ankler) — has been laid bare. Los Angeles is always on the knife’s edge of natural disasters. Now the raging fires in the second-most populous city in America have exposed a manmade disaster: an information wasteland.

In today’s scoop-heavy newsletter: Ashlee Vance’s new company, the Washington Post’s traffic crash, Melania Trump’s Amazon doc, Telegraph pathos, This American Life layoffs, Chuck Todd’s future, and secrets of the Pulitzer Prize board revealed. (Scoop count: 6)

In this wild moment merging Washington and Silicon Valley, you can follow Semafor Principals and Semafor Tech. And you can sign up with our friends at The Ankler for coverage of Hollywood through and after the fires.

Ashlee Vance launches Core Memory

The prolific Bloomberg tech journalist Ashlee Vance has left to start a new media company that will carry his curious, generally optimistic inquiries into technology and science. Core Memory, Vance’s new company, has the unusual ambition of producing high-end documentaries along with the typical “digital” products: a YouTube show, a podcast, and a Substack newsletter. That range matches Vance’s own career, which spans feature writing, hosting Bloomberg’s globetrotting Hello World show, writing a bestselling 2015 biography of Elon Musk, and producing independent documentaries, most recently Don’t Die on Netflix.

“I’m convinced there’s a way to live in both worlds and do it successfully,” Vance said of documentary filmmaking and digital journalism.

Former Reuters editor wrote confidential Pulitzer report

The Pulitzer Board, facing a lawsuit from Donald Trump over its Pulitzer prize for stories on Russian election meddling in 2016, based its decision to stand by those stories on a confidential review by former Reuters editor-in-chief Stephen Adler. The review, which Adler confirmed to Semafor that he wrote, and which the board had fought to keep secret, is now at the heart of Trump’s attempt to literally relitigate media coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election in an Okeechobee, Florida, court.

“The Pulitzer Board takes concerns about the Prizes very seriously. In the case of President-elect Trump’s challenge to the 2018 national reporting prizes, we chose an independent reviewer who is highly respected with impeccable credentials, unimpeachable integrity, and deep familiarity with the Pulitzer Prize standards and history,” the board said in a statement.

There are technical, legal reasons that the Pulitzers wanted his report to stay confidential — but the debate over the Russia coverage is painfully short on careful, disinterested evaluation, and perhaps both Trump and his critics will benefit from reading the report when it, nearly inevitably, becomes public.

‘This American Life’ faces rare staff cuts

The venerable podcast This American Life is poised to reduce staff for one of the few times since its founding in 1995, Semafor has learned. In recent weeks, host Ira Glass has quietly discussed the likely cuts with the show’s top leadership.

This American Life has been a beacon of success for its popular but labor-intensive style of storytelling, and the show’s fortunes have long been seen as a bellwether for the health of quality audio journalism in the industry as a whole. And while the show remains one of the most popular weekly podcasts and radio programs in the country, it recently split from The New York Times, which sold its ads for several years following the Times’ acquisition of Serial.

TAL was one of many that faced a significant drop in downloads when Apple stopped automatically downloading new episodes of podcasts to the devices of subscribers who hadn’t listened to several episodes. Last year, the show quietly changed its “about” page, revising its listenership from 4 million each week, broken out into 1.6 radio listeners and 2.6 million podcast downloads, down to 3 million between radio and digital, a shift in line with industry-wide declines. TAL did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Prospective buyer would like Telegraph to be nicer

The would-be buyer of The Telegraph, Dovid Efune, expressed concern to Telegraph CEO Anna Jones over how he is being portrayed in its pages. The Telegraph has called Efune a “minnow” who is “known for his robust Zionism” and has treated his financial plans with skepticism. But Efune’s outreach to Jones doesn’t seem to have helped.

This week, his would-be employees welcomed his latest prospective partner, Leon Black, by describing him in a headline as a “Wall Street billionaire ousted over Epstein links.” In another move that the hardened Londoners see as a bit naive, Efune has told associates he sought guidance from Times owner Rupert Murdoch — The Telegraph’s chief rival — on whether he was overpaying for the title. Murdoch assured him $550 million was a great price.

Still the sellers, the Abu Dhabi-based IMI — whose bid the same Telegraph staff scuppered — are sticking with Efune and appear confident he’ll round up the cash.

The Washington Post’s traffic tanks

Washington Post subscribers quit the paper en masse following owner Jeff Bezos’ decision to withhold its endorsement of outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris. But the Post’s audience problems extend beyond angry former subscribers.

Over the last four years, web traffic has cratered. According to internal data shared with Semafor in recent weeks, the Post’s daily traffic last year reached a nadir of just a quarter of what it was at its peak in January 2021. That month, the Post had around 22.5 million daily active users. But by the middle of 2024, its daily users hovered around 2.5-3 million daily users.

Last year, Washington City Paper noted that the Post had stopped publicly disclosing its traffic numbers in press releases, after a 60% decline in monthly traffic. On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Post’s revenue fell from $190 million in 2023 to $174 million last year.

Todd to exit NBC

Chuck Todd has quietly been meeting with Washington media organizations about his post NBC-future. The former host of Meet The Press has told top editors and leaders from other media organizations that he plans to leave NBC when his contract is up this year, and has discussed potential roles outside the network both in broadcast and digital media.

Todd was once a key part of NBC’s broadcast offerings, hosting Meet The Press and a daily Meet The Press politics program on MSNBC and writing for its website. But while NBC announced that Todd would focus on longform projects after stepping down from Meet the Press in 2023, he has been a far less visible presence across the news network and its cable counterpart.

Todd publicly criticized NBC over its decision to hire former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel last year. The network immediately backpedaled, but the incident led some staffers to question Todd’s future there.

Melania Trump starts her documentary press tour

Melania Trump, as we reported last Sunday, will participate in (and reportedly get paid handsomely for) an Amazon documentary directed by Brett Ratner. While the producers wouldn’t tell us much, Trump herself will offer some detail in an interview with Fox & Friends’ Ainsley Earhardt to air Monday.

“We started the production in November and we are shooting right now. So, it’s a day-to-day life, what I’m doing or what kind of responsibilities I have,” Trump said. “People they don’t really know and they will see it. It’s day-to-day, from the transition team, to moving to the White House, packing, establishing my team, the first lady’s office, moving into the White House, what it takes to make the residence your home, to hire the people that you need.” 

(It’s a topsy-turvy world out there. Amazon, to Ben’s enduring fury, front-ran his scoop on the documentary last Sunday with Fox. Fox — just to calm him down, apparently — shared this exclusively.)

What do the big tech leaders want, and where will they push the media in 2025? The Consumer Electronics Show introduced a range of new gadgets, screens, and robots, but will these innovations actually transform how we consume media? Or will the real shifts come from Washington, where tech giants like Meta and Amazon are directing their focus? Ben and new co-host Max Tani delve into these questions with Jessica Lessin, founder and CEO of The Information, to discuss how tech and its leaders will shape the media industry in 2025 and beyond.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

Peter Hamby is host of ”The Powers That Be,” a daily podcast from Puck.

What do the social media teams at Netflix, Apple, and Disney have in common? They read Geekout – the newsletter that delivers thoughtful analysis on the current state of social media. Penned by Matt Navarra and trusted by 33,000 marketers, it’s insightful, engaging, and keeps you “in the know” before things go viral. Get Geekout in your inbox every Friday. Subscribe for free.

⁛ News

Happy New Year: Many media companies waited until after the holidays this year to implement staff cuts. On Tuesday, the Washington Post announced that it would be laying off 4% of its staff, resulting in days of unrest and protest within its D.C. offices. Semafor was also first to note this week that Vox also laid off staff, many of which were based in Washington.

Headed out: More notable Politico staff plan on leaving the publication in the coming days, Semafor has learned. Natalie Allison and Lauren Egan have separately told Politico in recent weeks that they have accepted new roles elsewhere or will be leaving the Rosslyn-based outlet for personal reasons. Allison is joining the Washington Post, while Egan will join the digital media startup the Bulwark.

It’s the latest in a string of major staff changes for Politico, which has also recruited several top journalists from rivals such as Axios and NBC News. As Semafor previously reported, the outlet in recent weeks has been discussing bringing in Jack Blanchard, the author of its London Playbook, to helm its flagship DC edition, and has nabbed a few younger up-and-coming journalists from rivals including NBC News and Axios. Blanchard appears likely to join the Politico team, along with current author Eugene Daniels and other unannounced staff.

⁋ Publishing

On guard: NewsGuard sponsored the Washington Examiner this week, presumably as a way of continuing to position itself as a nonpartisan misinformation watchdog willing to support some conservative media.

Grim: The Root’s management sent out a surreal email to staff asking them to pick up the slack for a colleague who had died just a few days earlier, Semafor first reported on Wednesday.

Wintour travel: Anna Wintour lands in Dubai later this month amid a bitter feud with the previous publisher of Vogue Arabia, who is accusing Condé Nast of stealing the title back.

⁌ TV

Good fortune: Despite declines in overall television ratings, viewership is slightly up for Wheel of Fortune since Ryan Seacrest took over hosting the iconic evening gameshow.

✰ Hollywood

No escape: The LA fires this week didn’t stop the entertainment press and paparazzi, who attempted to follow celebrities through the fires in Malibu and the Palisades.

⁜ Tech

Right-hand man: Over the last week, Meta has executed a public relations campaign unlike anything in recent memory. The company has rolled out policy changes, personnel announcements, interviews with ideologically-aligned media figures, behind-the-scenes briefings with conservative influencers, and events aimed at generating news (like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, first reported by Semafor) — all with the purpose of signaling to the new administration and right-leaning users that the company is open to doing business.

All together: The Democratic National Committee is hosting its first ever candidate forum chair led by creators. Chorus, a left-leaning digital nonprofit that we’ve covered in this newsletter, will host an event on Tuesday featuring video creators, TikTokers, and podcasters interviewing the major candidates seeking to lead the DNC.

With the progressive “resistance” quiet ahead of Donald Trump’s second term, congressional Democrats are making their own shift: They’re turning away from past portrayals of Trump as a human wrecking ball and toward more potential collaboration, Semafor’s Burgess Everett reports.

“It’s just accepting the reality that Trump won. And us just saying he’s a chaotic guy goes nowhere. That’s just baked into people’s consciousness,” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told Everett of the party’s strategy.