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In this edition: media consolidation.Ķā€Œ  Ķā€Œ  Ķā€Œ  Ķā€Œ  Ķā€Œ  Ķā€Œ 
 
sunny San Francisco
sunny Washington
sunny Pittsburgh
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December 2, 2024
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Ben Smith
Ben Smith

Welcome to Semafor Media, where weā€™re always thankful for the First Amendment.

If you listen to Steve Bannonā€™s podcast, War Room ā€” Iā€™d recommend it, in moderation ā€” youā€™ll hear a steady stream of threats and vivid revenge fantasies directed at the media. He likes warning MSNBC hosts to ā€œpreserve your documents.ā€

Kash Patel, a Bannon ally, is President-elect Donald Trumpā€™s choice for FBI director, news that prompted a round of nervous texts from media types this weekend. Patel promised Bannon last year heā€™d ā€œcome after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.ā€ The presidentā€™s Sunday night pardon of his son will, in some sense, give ammunition to that war on the Justice Department.

Many of Trumpā€™s threats directed at the establishment media are fairly clear. Former Washington Post editor Marty Baron recently ran through them. Trump is warning of regulatory measures against big media owners, as he did with CNN in his last term. Thatā€™s already enough to make some nervous. He may prosecute journalists in national security leak cases.

But what, in a literal sense, are Patel and Bannon talking about when they threaten Ari Melber and Chris Hayes? I texted Bannon to ask this morning, and he didnā€™t reply.

Also today: Max on the coming wave of consolidation. If you squint, you can see how what we currently call ā€œpodcastsā€ swallow and displace cable. Also: paywall news from New York, Vox, and the San Francisco Standard; and labor woes in Pittsburgh. (Scoop count: 4)

Correction: An earlier version of this introduction misstated the job for which Patel will be nominated. It is FBI director, not Attorney General.

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1

Media braces for consolidation in 2025

Bari Weiss holding a microphone in 2022
Bari Weiss in 2022. (Reuters/Mike Blake)

Itā€™s open season for media companies big and small next year. Media insiders expect investment and dealmaking to whir back to life amid a friendlier regulatory environment for consolidation, continued upheaval in cable, and a reengaged audience that tuned out the news during much of Joe Bidenā€™s presidency.

Big media: The simultaneous erosion of the entertainment industry and cable business and the return of a potentially more merger-friendly administration led by Donald Trump appear likely to spur several hot years of corporate dealmaking that will reshape the entertainment and cable news industry. And at the content level, the continued growth of YouTube as the default viewership platform of choice is reshaping the news, cooking, and talk-show content that a generation ago wouldā€™ve grown through cable television.

News: Some of the independent news media success stories of the past several years are seeing renewed interest from potential investors, buyers, and business partners.

Since the election, the Free Pressā€™ founder, Bari Weiss, has been inundated with offers and interest in investment in her independent digital publication. As rumors circulated about the publicationā€™s future, Weiss told Semafor that while the FP didnā€™t have any immediate plans for acquisition or investment, she felt that the increased interest in the Free Press was a vindication of the outletā€™s worldview ā€” contrarian, skeptical of progressivism ā€” and demonstrated some of the tectonic shifts occurring in the US media business.

ā€œThe vibe shift is real. Itā€™s been a big few weeks for those of us in the reality-based community,ā€ she told Semafor. ā€œIā€™ll let you know when we have news!ā€

Audio: The increased attention in recent months on podcasting and the ā€œmanosphereā€ has already prompted public relations leaders to examine their best practices, and that trend looks poised to shake up media dealmaking as well.

Read on for what could come next for the podcast/YouTube ecosystem. ā†’

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2

As goes San Francisco...

San Francisco Standard logo

The San Francisco Standard, an unusual and ambitious local news startup backed by journalist-turned-investor Mike Moritz, will introduce a two-tiered metered paywall on Thursday, its CEO told Semafor.

The program will offer news but also lifestyle benefits: access to food events and gym membership for regular subscribers, who pay $90 a year, and sweeter perks for members of a $900 invitation-only ā€œGold Standardā€ elite tier that CEO Griffin Gaffney described as looking more like a social club, beginning with a private Rufus Wainwright concert in February.

The Standard blends local news and politics with culture coverage, and styles itself more New York Magazine than the metro section. Its focus, and the new program, matches the mood of a city thatā€™s swinging hard back to the (relative) center and just tossed out its mayor over concerns about public disorder.

Read Benā€™s take and the view from competing news outlets. ā†’

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Semafor Exclusive
3

An app and a paywall

Vox Media logo

Vox Media, parent company of New York Magazine, is preparing to announce several changes aimed at boosting revenue and rewarding its most faithful subscribers. On Monday, the magazine will launch a new flagship mobile app that will offer readers comprehensive access to the magazine across its separately-branded verticals, like The Cut and Vulture, a spokesperson for Vox Media confirmed to Semafor.

The move is intended to bolster subscriber engagement and help continue to foster audience loyalty away from the mediation of tech platforms. It will be the magazineā€™s second crack at a mobile app; New York first launched an iPhone app in 2016. This time, the magazine is focusing less on replicating the experience of reading the print magazine on mobile, and more on servicing subscribers whose No. 1 concern is the ease of accessing NY Mag content on mobile.

On Tuesday, the company will also be launching a sitewide subscription to its technology vertical, The Verge. (Status reported earlier this year that Vox was weighing paywalling it.) Beginning this week, the Verge will charge $7/month or $50/year for comprehensive access to the site as well as the already-paywalled newsletters Command Line and Notepad.

Some content and the publicationā€™s homepage, which was redesigned in 2022 to resemble a social feed, will remain free. The Verge is Vox Mediaā€™s third major subscription push behind New York and Vox, which launched a membership program earlier this year.

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World Economy Summit

Carlyle Co-Chairman David Rubenstein, Citadel founder and CEO Ken Griffin, former US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, and KKR Co-Chairman Henry Kravis will serve as co-chairs of Semaforā€™s World Economy Summit on April 23-25, 2025, in Washington, D.C.

This third-annual event will bring together US cabinet officials, global finance ministers, central bankers, and Fortune 500 CEOs for conversations that cut through the political noise to dive into the most pressing issues facing the world economy.

Join the waitlist for more information and access to priority registration.

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One Good Text

Alex Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios.

Ben: Do you think the media missed the story of Bidenā€™s family? Alex: Many reporters were wary of touching the family stuff (people like Matt Viser and Annie Linskey did great work), and they missed a central drama of the Biden presidency which doubled as a family tragedy and a love story. Yes, there were a lot of bad-faith conservatives trying to humiliate rather than illuminate. But Bidenā€™s grief of Beau and guilt over Hunter haunted Biden the past four years.
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Intel

ā› News

A screenshot of Peggy Noonan speaking to Bari Weiss, though only Noonan is visible
Peggy Noonan speaks to Bari Weiss (off-camera). (Screenshot/The Free Press)

Noonan meets Trump: The Wall Street Journalā€™s Peggy Noonan told Weiss that sheā€™d avoided Trump for years because she ā€œhad a feeling that up close he would be charming and funny and that would mess with my swing as an observer.ā€ They finally met at an editorial board meeting recently, and her fears were borne out.

Trouble in Pittsburgh: The president of the union at the Post-Gazette was arrested after throwing a chair at a wall during negotiations. The paperā€™s union, long a troubled one, has been on strike for two years, even as many of its journalists are back at work across the picket line. Asked for comment on the incident, NewsGuild President Jon Schleuss responded by criticizing the paperā€™s management, but didnā€™t address the arrest.

No error: If you want to start a small, ambitious newsroom, listen to Jason Koebler describe to Peter Kafka how he and three partners built 404 Media to revenues in the ballpark of a million a year, mostly with splashy scoops. Their biggest cost after payroll? Insurance.

ā‹ Publishing

The Guardianā€™s owner ā€” struggling to sell off its Sunday paper, the Observer, to Tortoise Media over the objections of a restive staff ā€” says itā€™ll take a stake in the podcast-centric startup as part of the deal. Meanwhile, another bidder has emerged for the publication, a green energy investor named Dale Vince.

ā˜Š Audio

A still from a Nelk Boys video with Trump
A still from a Nelk episode with Trump. (Screenshot)

A Trump official told Politico this week that they ā€œcould very well see a press briefing room where Maggie Haberman sits next to Joe Rogan.ā€ That seems unlikely on a lot of fronts: While the ā€œmanosphereā€ podcast stars and YouTubers have backed Trump and benefited from his appearances on their shows, few have expressed any enthusiastic desire to take part in the drudgery of daily White House press corps duty.

But Politicoā€™s piece buried a more interesting detail: The Nelk Boys, the YouTube pranksters-turned-Trump supporters, dipped their toes into political organizing this election cycle, spending $20 million through their voting registration initiative Send the Vote to target 18-to-34-year-old men in swing states who were registered to vote but hadnā€™t previously turned out.

Politico reported that the group organized a tailgate at the Penn State-Wisconsin football game in October, ran a voter registration concert with rapper Waka Flocka Flame in Atlanta, and got over 100,000 people to look up voting sites through the Send the Vote website.

āœ° Hollywood

In another sign of the celebrity media production bubble bursting, LeBron Jamesā€™ media venture, SpringHill, reportedly lost $30 million last year. Jamesā€™ company recently merged with British media company Fulwell 73 in order to achieve greater scale to navigate challenging media headwinds.

āœ¦ Marketing

It was a big Black Friday for Amazonā€™s advertising business. Media buyers and advertisers told Digiday they were experimenting with Amazon Primeā€™s new shoppable advertising feature ā€” while also jockeying for space on Amazonā€™s Black Friday broadcast of the Kansas City Chiefs and Las Vegas Raiders game. Amazon used the game to woo football fans to sign up for Prime.

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Semafor Spotlight
A great read from Semafor AfricaThe OpenAI logo
Ishmael Daro/Flickr

French telecoms company Orange plans to partner with Meta and OpenAI to develop new artificial intelligence models trained on African languages, Semaforā€™s Alexander Onukwue reported. Orangeā€™s project comes amid rising interest in making AI tools available to African audiences, but it may not be an easy undertaking for a diverse continent in which more than 3,000 languages are spoken, Onukwue wrote.

For crucial stories from the ground in Africa, subscribe to Semaforā€™s Africa newsletter. ā†’

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