The Palisades Fire tore through a strangely contained beachfront corridor of Malibu last Tuesday night. Some people went out to dinner in Beverly Hills or went for drinks at the Malibu Country Mart and could never go home again. From Carbon Canyon Road down to Topanga Canyon Road, it’s a mile-plus of utter devastation with a few odd exceptions. 

Driving down Pacific Coast Highway from northern Malibu on Sunday evening, all you see for miles down the coast is pale blue sky and deep blue ocean reflecting off the cliffside red rocks. The National Guard has taken up position along the beach. 

The Malibu Pier, all wood and fully flammable, is standing intact. 

But just after the Malibu Pier, between Carbon Canyon and Rambla Pacifico Street, all is twisted metal and ash. In the blackened hulks of these structures, there’s absolutely nothing to be found. Not a photo. Not a promotional flyer left from a mailbox. Absolutely nothing. 

A few houses were oddly spared in this mile-long rampage. 

I talked to a crew from Orange County Alameda Station. They’ve been here on PCH since Tuesday, making sure that there are no gas lines or other embers that can flare up. An acrid smell hangs in the air. Ripped and torn power lines snake along the sidewalk. 

Duke’s restaurant, which initially was thought to be burned, stands intact. The Getty Villa stands up on its hill with National Guard jeeps stationed in front of it on PCH.  The famed Gladstones is standing. The fancy Bel-Air Bay Club is wounded but upright. 

The devastation picks up right after Duke’s all the way down the coast toward the Pacific Palisades. A tree branch stuck in the air, a random metal beam juts out of the ground, askew. And almost nothing else. Everything is flattened up to the terra-cotta pots that sit out on what was the sidewalk in front of the houses. 

And all along the winding road of PCH, across from the beach, the houses are untouched. 

The post The Remains of Malibu: Ashes and Embers in the Sand appeared first on TheWrap.

I feel certain I’ve seen this before – in a movie.  

The upscale outdoor Village mall with everything from Lululemon to Yves St Laurent to Erewhon market — where you can get a pressed juice for a mere $16 – is half intact. YSL is fine. But across the street another unidentifiable store is a blackened hulk. The Italian restaurant Porta Via seems fine, but Serena & Lily next door is burned. 

This is where much of the Hollywood community lives, and spends leisure time, an idyllic suburban paradise perched high above the Pacific. Directors like Steven Spielberg. Actors like Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson. Producers like Jason Blum and Brian Grazer. Lawyers, creative execs, writers. Developer Rick Caruso launched this upscale playground in 2018 and it has been a hub ever since.

In 24 hours, it’s mostly gone.

Much of the Palisades commercial center and many many houses are burned to the ground. The Ralph’s supermarket, Starbucks, the yogurt shop. The fancy Elyse Walker retail store. The non-fancy car wash. The gas station. Casa Nostra, a large Italian restaurant is a single wall standing with its tattered outdoor canopy remaining.  

By midday on Wednesday, many apartment buildings were still burning. Ash fell from the blackened sky. Firefighters seemed to have stopped any further active measures, because there was little to salvage. All of the houses directly across from the Village mall were burned, most down to their foundations. A single charred child’s swing clung to a tree branch in front of a blackened lot. Next door a brick chimney was all that remained of the former house. A set of concrete steps leading to nothing but ash.

Along the broad Temescal Canyon Road that connects Sunset Boulevard to the beach, the Pierson Playhouse is gone, burned except for a few metal steel beams. The Palisades high school still has its main buildings, but fire trucks were working on extinguishing fires still burning in a building near the football field. 

Driving through Santa Monica, massive branches were swept to the side of the road, looking like Nature’s refuse. The wind buffeted cars as large hunks of leaves dropped like oversized rain. An eerie sunlight filtered through the smoke. 

The streets were abandoned, and most of the parking spots on my normally full street were empty. Garbage bins were blown over and massive Palm fronds littered the street. 

Driving toward the Palisades, it got ever smokier. By the time you got to San Vicente, the smoke was thick and the smell of ash and smoke strong.

At San Vicente and 7th Street, a massive tree had been blown over, uprooted by the wind. 

The streets were abandoned down near the beach in Santa Monica except a few people walking on their own. One man walked in the middle of the street, wheeling a suitcase.

Astonishing.

The post Pacific Palisades Is Gone. Up Close and on the Ground It’s Even Worse appeared first on TheWrap.

The impending arrival of a second Donald Trump presidency, this time backed by a win of the popular vote, means we need to buckle up, hunker down and prepare for all the things that we can’t exactly guess at that are coming. But they’re coming. 

I can feel the investment bankers salivating for the coming M&A business. And I can feel liberal media girding its loins for battle. It does appear that we will have a Cabinet full of former Fox personalities, and that will be interesting. And good news for the bros: being white and male is going to be back in style. 

But in our own backyard, Hollywood seems unlikely to put up much of a fight in what is sure to be a shifting cultural landscape. If we didn’t see the studio CEOs heading down to Mar-a-Lago post-election like tech titans Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and even possibly Bill Gates, no one is looking to be a liberal hero either. The industry’s power brokers follow the prevailing winds — it’s what they do.

A year ago we were emerging from the fever dream of two Hollywood strikes and trying to fathom how AI was going to remake our world. A year later, here’s my assessment of what turned out to be the really big shifts in our shifting world — the end of media, the rise of antisemitism, the stalling of DEI — and what lays the groundwork for another year of disruption. 

But perhaps it’s not the disruption we thought was coming. 

The year 2024 will be the year media fell apart

The ecosystem of news media has been cracking for two decades, but in 2024 it fully fell apart. While we’ve become accustomed to the bloodletting of constant layoffs in legacy newsrooms (and that’s still happening), now we’re seeing premium talent ditching their jobs to start independent news organizations like Bari Weiss’s Free Press, Oliver Darcy’s Status, Kara Swisher’s podcasts or — like Don Lemon and Megyn Kelly — thriving YouTube channels.

The coup de grâce was the presidential election, in which liberal cable news went to war against Trump and failed to stop his win, while billionaire newspaper owners at The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times bucked their newsrooms and refused to endorse Kamala Harris. This was a tipping point that will stand in history. Now almost two full months after the election people have still not tuned back in to the news. Personally, I am finding other ways to stay informed, which means grazing across a much wider set of news sources. It requires a more skeptical filter. It’s less efficient. And I miss stuff. But even though I know we need it, mainstream news has lost me for the moment. 

The year antisemitism found a home on the left

Don’t tell me this has nothing to do with anything because it does. The shocking rise of antisemitism (not “anti-Zionism” or “anti-Israel sentiment”) in mainstream institutions, whether that’s the BBC, Columbia University or Irish and Canadian government offices, augurs badly for good people everywhere. It doesn’t take a trained student of history to know that when societies start demonizing Jews, catastrophe usually ensues for both the Jews and those societies. 

Hollywood remains an industry where Jews and Jewish culture are deeply embedded. The tension between progressives who have found new language to delegitimize Israel has left Jews in Hollywood feeling isolated and fearful, as TheWrap has reported all year. The shocking omission of Jews from the Motion Picture Academy’s new museum celebrating the history of Hollywood and the insensitive (to be generous) approach in fixing the omission by using offensive stereotypes about Jews was an example of a point of view that cannot simply be dismissed as a blind spot.

This will continue to be a tough conversation. Let’s have it. 

The year DEI hit the wall

It was bound to happen. Pendulums swing, and this pendulum is swinging pretty hard. After a peak national surge to combat racism in the wake of George Floyd’s horrific murder by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020, DEI programs — adopted at C-suite levels at media and entertainment companies — are in retreat across the board. Some executives quit in frustration after concluding there was no real support for prioritizing diversity, while other companies cut departments and positions as part of their broader layoffs.

If Kamala Harris’s election loss meant anything at the symbolic level for women and people of color, it also sent a shot across the bow of diversity and inclusion activists. After the Trump campaign successfully demonized trans people, a backlash against the trans and LGBTQ community seems already underway, as TheWrap has reported. The discussion about being an “anti-racist” has turned into a right-wing punchline. And Hollywood is quietly beginning to phase out plot lines — like on a recent Pixar series — that delve into DEI questions.

This all seems bad. But. A conversation about what DEI should mean — who draws the lines, who makes those rules, and what role the social media mob plays — seems long overdue. 

Unfortunately, first there will be backlash.  

The year streaming found its legs 

Five years ago Hollywood made a fateful pivot into streaming. Disney+, Warner’s Max, NBCU’s Peacock and Paramount+ got massive investments from their parent companies as legacy cable channels and broadcast were starved for resources. 

This year, nearly all of those services found bright moments of profitability, while the shrinking cable businesses got write-offs like some kind of bastard children. 

Meanwhile, Netflix — unburdened by any millstones of cable — soared with its subscribers and nascent sports programming and ended the year at a massive high share price on Wall Street. 

This year cemented the status of streaming in entertainment.

The year Hollywood hung in

Thousands of jobs were disappeared this year, just like in “The Leftovers.” Poof. It’s hard to believe that those jobs in reality television, visual effects and across the board production will be coming back anytime soon. 

A studio chief who shall remain nameless and genderless told me recently that the deals struck by the Screen Actors Guild and Writers Guild in 2023 appeared to achieve a whole host of increased benefits for working actors and writers. But the reality, said this studio chief, is that the new contracts have made production so much more expensive that going offshore is now an imperative to make money. And the increased cost has stifled production decisions as every nickel gets scrutinized. 

On the other hand, Hollywood companies slimming down to adjust to new economic realities was probably a brutal necessity. And as efficiencies continue to emerge with artificial intelligence, the year Hollywood hung in there may swing back to a 2025 where solid profit can reemerge. 

The year of Elon

Merriam-Webster: Oligopoly noun ol·​i·​gop·​o·​ly ˌä-lə-ˈgä-pə-lē  ˌō-:  a market situation in which each of a few producers affects but does not control the market.

We have been told by the experts that the United States under Trump 2.0, led by a crony Cabinet and a slavish Congress — will become an oligopoly. But that doesn’t quite capture Elon Musk, does it?

We might have to coin a new term for what Musk now represents on the American landscape. We’ve never had one before. An unelected, shadow political force with a grip on the presidency-elect (bought and paid for) who wields technological power, mass media power, celebrity power. All while enamored of the spotlight and his own perceived infallibility, a desire to meddle in all aspects of science, health, communication, public policy and politics. And all while on heavy ketamine use because who could survive that overactive brain without relief?

Throw in for good measure an apparently inexhaustible supply of money because, and you may know this, he’s the richest man in the world, with his wealth recently topping $400 billion, according to Forbes.

Wish us luck in 2025. 

The post Truthbombs of 2024: Media Is Over, Antisemitism Is Cool, DEI Is Kaput appeared first on TheWrap.

“It’s really disheartening,” said one senior female industry executive, referring to the detailed allegations of harassment and a social media smear campaign against Lively by her co-star Baldoni. “If you read the complaint, the text messages, it’s crystal clear that something really bad happened here.”

“This is on another level,” said a veteran Hollywood publicity executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, referring to the successful effort by a PR campaign to tag Lively as “tone-deaf, difficult to work with, a bully,” as The New York Times put it.

“This is not a traditional crisis plan,” said the PR executive. “A traditional plan means presenting an offensive and a defensive view, not an overt, fictitious smear campaign, more reminiscent of Russian interference in an election than defending a client.”

The fallout has been swift and severe. Baldoni’s talent agency WME dropped him on Saturday. And by Monday a series of unfortunate events befell the actor/producer: Sony, distributor of “It Ends With Us,” issued a firm statement of support for Lively (the movie made $350 million and the studio used Lively’s cut made by editors she hired) decrying “reputational attacks”; the non-profit group Vital Voices stripped Baldoni of an allyship award they’d given him earlier this month, citing the allegations; and pro-male feminist Liz Plank quit “Man Enough,” the podcast she did with Baldoni, in an Instagram post. 

Lively filed a complaint with the California Civil Rights Commission on Friday as a precursor to a lawsuit alleging that Baldoni hired two publicists to damage her reputation after a dispute over his conduct on the set of their movie, “It Ends With Us.” The New York Times published damning details — including a series of text messages between Baldoni and two publicists — that were shared widely on social media through the weekend and into Monday, as offices shut down and industry insiders boarded flights to Hawaii, Mexico and homesteads in Palm Springs. 

They made time for the latest scandal coursing through the heart of the movie industry. 

“This is truly heinous,” the influential Kara Swisher posted on Threads, copying a page from Lively’s complaint alleging the actress was pressured to “simulate full nudity” in a birth scene “despite no mention of nudity for this scene in the script, her contract, or in previous creative discussions.”

Baldoni also gave the walk-on role of ob/gyn to a close friend, Wayfarer CEO Steve Sarowitz, for the birth scene, which she found “invasive and humiliating.” 

That was one of many specific instances of intrusive personal behavior detailed in the 80-page complaint that women’s activists found cringeworthy. It comes seven years after the rise of the #MeToo movement and the outing of a series of sexual predators in the industry. 

But it was the series of texts among Baldoni’s publicity executives Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, named as defendants along with the actor and his producers, that many in Hollywood found most objectionable. 

“I think you guys need to be tough and show the strength of what you guys can do in these scenarios,” Abel wrote to Nathan, in texts obtained via subpoena. “He wants to feel like she can be buried.”

“Of course- but you know when we send over documents we can’t send over the work we will or could do because that could get us in a lot of trouble,” Nathan responded, adding, “We can’t write we will destroy her.”

Abel wrote to Nathan on Aug. 4 that “I’m having reckless thoughts of wanting to plant pieces this week of how horrible Blake is to work with. Just to get ahead of it.”

Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman did not respond to a request for comment by TheWrap. 

***

The issues raised by the complaint, which is expected to lead to a lawsuit, go beyond the alleged behavior by Baldoni and the Wayfarer producers. It suggests a more sinister shadow campaign that sought to invent negative stories and amplify them, reaching beyond what most publicity firms in Hollywood see as acceptable. 

“There’s lines that have been crossed,” said the PR executive. “I’m not saying we don’t use dark arts, and we don’t use Page Six… We’re all guilty of spinning. But we’re not guilty of fabrication by smear.” 

“What distinguishes this is the proactive and deliberately misleading aspect of it,” said an attorney working on the Lively action. “Rather than correcting the record, or putting out a positive narrative, this PR group — in cooperation with the client — sought a strategy to astroturf. To create threads of stories, to use digital means to artificially create a conversation, and then once a conversation appeared organic, to stoke the flames and expand it. That is not normal PR. That is misleading and gives the public an impression that is manipulated behind [the] scenes on a digital basis.” 

A dozen phone calls to publicity, talent and film executives from TheWrap went unanswered on Monday, a sure sign that the dust-up raised awkward questions for Hollywood that were easier to duck than confront. 

For many, it seemed a reminder that Hollywood has made precious little progress when it comes to respecting women. That public shaming is still a tool in the publicity kit for women who dare to complain about sexual harassment. After all, if Baldoni — a moderately known TV actor — could retaliate against a figure as popular as Lively, whose husband Ryan Reynolds is one of the most bankable stars working today, who is safe? 

“One of her goals in filing this is to speak out against retaliation,” said her lawyer. “At first to keep people from speaking out against harassment. Because she knows that if it can be done to her, it can be done to anyone. And the only way to do that is to shine a light on it when it happens.”

But at least one legal expert said the case could prove to be a valuable lesson for an industry that often preaches equality, but has a hard time living those values. 

“Despite the horrendous allegations and great animosity and negativity, this case could prove to be positive in terms of shining a light on the abuse that often does happen on movie sets but gets overlooked,” said Tre Lovell, an entertainment and civil attorney. “I believe the industry will respond to ensure more mechanisms are put in place to allow actors and set personnel to have a protocol and means to better report harassment, discrimination, hostile work environment and retaliation, thus making movie sets safer in this regard for the future.”

Others commenting on social media were more skeptical, yet found a silver lining in the exposure of the scandal. 

“If you, like me, are heartbroken that the two gleeful architects of the Blake Lively takedown are young women, just focus and shine a brighter light on Megan Twohey, the journalist who dug deep and reported extensively and objectively on this to reveal the truth. Like she did on [Harvey] Weinstein,” Stephanie March, an editor at Minneapolis-St Paul city magazine, posted on Threads. 

Umberto Gonzalez and Drew Taylor contributed to this report.

The post Blake Lively Bombshell Turns Hollywood Against Justin Baldoni, Raises PR Questions appeared first on TheWrap.

And you all might be thinking: Who are you kidding?

For all the world, I imagined this year’s Power Women Summit to happen in the afterglow of a different outcome in the election.  

If you’re like me, maybe you wake up every day with a strong desire to stay in bed. To NOT reach for your phone. And think: Are we in December? Is the election over?

So – OK. And however old or young you are, the setbacks come as a surprise. It can’t be normal that women in this country don’t have reproductive freedom, I can’t accept that. It can’t be normal that women in Afghanistan can no longer speak aloud in public. It can’t be normal that women face arrest and torture in Iran for showing their hair. And yes, Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to a convicted felon, leaving us to wonder if a woman can ever rise to our highest office.

I’ve been re-setting my expectations for a long time, expecting that the world would come around to a reasonable middle ground in which we just treat one another as equals.

So I’ll tell you what I tell myself, and what I do not.

I’m not going to tell you to be resilient. Though we have to be. I’m not going to tell you to be fearless. Because our fear is not misplaced. The present moment is not what we expected. The future is uncertain. But today is a day of support, of alliance, of optimism. It’s a day to put a first foot in front of another foot. Just today — we are going to continue walking on our path. With confidence. And with pride. 

And there are so many leaders at the Summit to lift us up. Twenty-three-year-old Jordan Chiles, an Olympic champion who led the US gymnastics team in Paris to a gold medal, is opening the event and talking about discipline. Disappointment. And triumph. I’m excited to hear from Stacey Abrams, the political trailblazer who helped flip Georgia to the Democratic Party in 2020 and will speak with Laura Dern about climate change. We will hear from some of our top directors and showrunners, producers, writers, stylists. And two sisters, Dakota and Elle Fanning, will be our spotlight conversation. 

Today is a feast for the spirit.  

We cannot win the fight for equality without setbacks. Advocating for change means being reminded that not everyone is ready for it. It’s OK. We’re on our feet. We’re on the path. It was only 104 years ago that women won the right to even vote. That battle took 70 years.  

So we keep going. We’re not angry. We’re not defeated. We’re not discouraged. We have our eyes open. We’re prepared. And we’re just not going away. The Summit is here to remind us of that.

I’d like to thank sponsors including: South Coast Plaza, Loeb & Loeb LLP, Lionsgate, Whalar, Paramount Global, CLEAR, Universal, Hallmark Media, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Warner Bros. Discovery, FX, Yahoo!, Searchlight Pictures and NBCUniversal, and the Shari Redstone Foundation. 

Thanks to our staff and our community and university partners. 

Onward to the Summit! 

The post Power Women Summit: Advocating for Women When It Feels Hard appeared first on TheWrap.

But you’d be wrong. 

Instead of reexamining its news practices after months of relentless pro-Harris coverage that seems to have wildly underestimated voters’ economic anger, a cultural backlash and Latino surge for Trump, insiders at MSNBC are feeling confident. 

WaxWord spoke to a half-dozen individuals at MSNBC and NBCUniversal and the conclusion was consistent: MSNBC is fine, despite criticism from media observers like Bill Maher or Jay Rosen or myself, and a steep drop in ratings. There is nothing wrong with the brand. The audience is extremely loyal and likes the dog food that is being served. 

The fact that MSNBC’s ratings have dropped like a stone after the election — down 48% in primetime and 38% overall — while Fox News’ ratings have seen a 41% boost in total day viewership, does not seem to be making an impression internally.  

One senior MSNBC insider explained that ratings always fall after the excitement leading up to election, and that viewers would be back. “It was anticipated that (ratings) would drop after the election because of the cyclical nature of the event,” said this executive. “That was not a surprise. And then they come back.”

Said a senior insider at NBCUniversal: “I don’t know that this (drop) is impacted by politics in any direction. It’s a very strong brand. And it’s been growing for some time.” The executive, however, could not really explain why Fox News’ ratings would be up, given a parallel circumstance. 

CNN’s ratings have also cratered, although a little less steeply, and there is some evidence that news consumers disappointed by the election result are tuning out across the board. 

“I pretty much stopped on a dime” after the election, said MSNBC viewer Brandon Wilson, a professor in California. As the Washington Post article for which he was interviewed noted: “It was the Monday-morning quarterbacking he couldn’t stand; he felt it was too early to nitpick about how Harris had run her campaign, and he found ‘the finger-pointing and bashing of the Democratic Party’ to be counterproductive.”

Wilson is not alone. I personally felt like I couldn’t listen to the same so-called “experts” weigh in when they were so wrong in their conclusions, for a second time, as I wrote previously. I have heard from dozens of people who have said they’ve tuned out, each for their own reasons. 

***

But there’s a good reason why the good folks at MSNBC are not worried. In a coincidental move driven by the decline of cable television and divorced from politics and media, Comcast announced last week that it would spin out most of its cable channels, including MSNBC and CNBC, into a standalone, public company. 

And it turns out that the new company, SpinCo, not only will drive about $7 billion in revenue based on current performance of those channels, but – according to a knowledgeable individual – throw off up to $2.5 billion in EBITDA. 

What’s more, $1 billion of that EBITDA comes from the two news channels, about evenly split, this individual said. 

The reason for that cash flow comes from the lucrative business of cable subscribers and carriage agreements. NBCUniversal — and now SpinCo — receives a monthly fee from the likes of Charter, Comcast and other cable providers, for each subscriber. Advertising, which is more susceptible to ratings, is only about 30% of MSNBC’s revenue. The lion’s share comes from massive subscriber fees that are tied to long term contracts. 

A spokesperson for Comcast declined to confirm or deny these figures, but agreed that SpinCo would have low debt, be well capitalized and have a strong balance sheet. This information has quickly trickled through the talent tier of MSNBC, as new CEO Mark Lazarus met with each of them last week.

Lazarus will thus have a great deal of cash to either invest in the cable channels, acquire new companies or create new products. 

So while I was wondering, stupidly, how MSNBC would move forward as a brand given the yawning gap in credibility post-election, and now its decoupling from the NBC newsgathering operation, a more basic reality yanked me back to clarity. MSNBC now has lots of cash, and does not have to send that cash back to any parent company. 

Even with a resource sharing agreement with NBC, MSNBC essentially becomes a group of talking opinionators. People in agreement talking to themselves. I don’t know how that’s a news operation. But as a business, apparently it works.

From a business perspective, there is still risk tied to the inexorably declining number of cable subscribers This risk is that this decline will ultimately atomize the once-mighty cable bundle. And as one expert put it to me, subscriber fees are guaranteed only as long as the bundle stays together. 

The subscriber number that is declining five to 10 percent a year could come undone much more quickly if, for example, ESPN moves to its own streaming service. Which looms as more likely than not. 

Many have suggested that because SpinCo has no real digital presence, the likely investment would be in a streaming product. Fox News has Fox Nation, a streaming news channel that has about 2 million subscribers. And there is no risk of being competitive with Comcast’s streaming service, Peacock, which has no programming tie to the spun-off channels. Lazarus will no doubt pay close attention to that opportunity, along with possible roll-ups of cable content creators like AMC Networks or A&E. 

But there’s zero shade for the news network over at corporate. “We do think there is an opportunity for growth,” said a Comcast executive. “MSNBC, CNBC and the sports programming on USA – these are must-haves.”  

The post MSNBC Stays in Its Bubble and Celebrates SpinCo as Viewers Flee appeared first on TheWrap.

I can’t do it. 

I’m not saying I’ll never watch or listen again. But – am I alone here? – my entire body recoils from listening to more claptrap from the same claptrapping apparatus. 

The media got it wrong. Fatally wrong. And the media can’t just pivot into the next cycle of looking around the room and asking, “What just happened?” as if it had nothing to do with it.  The room is too small. The audience insular. The results were decisively not what was expected. And in some way, the media has forfeited its mandate as a result. I speak as a member of the media and also someone who critiques the media and who believes that the First Amendment – the free exchange of information and opinion – is the indispensable pillar of democracy. 

But we have to step back and look at the wreckage. Our system of information failed for a second time on two major fronts: The media failed to gauge the actual mood of the American electorate, wishcasting the competent, non-felonious Kamala Harris into office. And it failed to speak persuasively to voters who rejected the collective wisdom of legacy media, after being told who Trump is, what bad acts he has already committed and what further bad acts he has promised if reelected. 

None of it landed, it appears. Apparently we are talking to ourselves. 

People, the system needs a total rethink. 

Some of my colleagues have sadly chosen to blame the voters. “We have romanticized the working class and minorities,” wrote a journalist friend who has been in the trenches for three decades, like me. “These are not these innocent lambs who were deceived. Many are racist and misogynist.”

Or blame the Democrats. New York Times columnists Lydia Polgreen invested a couple of thousand words in conversation with Tressie McMillan Cottom to get to the bottom of what happened. The conversation doubled down on the progressive left’s agenda, despite voters’ thunderous rejection.  

“It is still astonishing to me that the Harris campaign invested so much in touting support of Republicans who had clearly failed to persuade their own allies to join their side. Who did they expect would suddenly be persuaded by them?” Polgreen said under a headline about the Democrats: “They Were Wrong.”

As a response, that is not going to work. Polgreen should be asking: Why weren’t those on the Republican side persuaded? Who were they listening to?

“The answer is the right-wing media,” wrote The New Republic’s Michael Tomasky. “Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.”

True. So what do the rest of us do? I’m not yet seeing the self-examination that is warranted. We need a collective brainstorm and a serious response as a profession. We have lost the room. Never in my life did I think that the scarcity of information that existed before the rise of mass media might be less risky for our democracy than an oversupply of information. Nor was I imaginative enough to think that a focused stream of misinformation would present a serious challenge to real reporting and news. 

If people have moved away from network news and broadsheet newspapers to opinionated podcasts and TikTok lies, then that’s one signal of how things need to change. If more people are watching “television” on YouTube than on any given broadcast or cable network, then OK – the table stakes have changed.

I have been reluctant to give up on my bedrock belief that reporters should aim to report facts rather than tell readers how to think. More and more it seems that we are telling people what and how to think. In the last two weeks before the election, MSNBC’s primetime was running Harris and Obama’s rallies nearly end to end. To no end.     

But I do not have the answer for how media and information needs to be reapproached. Here at TheWrap we have pivoted into serving news over our social media accounts in addition to the mothership website, because we know that’s where new readers are. 

Right now there are far more questions than answers. But blaming the voters is lazy and doesn’t address the problem. Our job is to hold power to account. Time to hold ourselves to account. 

The post The Media Needs a Reinvention Not Just a Wake-Up Call After Trump’s Surprise Win appeared first on TheWrap.

It was. Not. Close. Donald Trump won 51 percent of the vote while indicted, guilty of felonies, promising to jail enemies, deport millions and, finally, fellating a microphone. 

Voters did not care. They chose anger over joy. They chose chaos over competence. They chose the wildest wild card over the urgent warnings from the political, economic, cultural and media establishment not to put Trump back in power. 

Understand: This is not a divide between Right and Left. It is a divide between those with power and those who feel insistently disempowered. 

Pay attention while you sit in mourning and shock. Here is an incomplete list of those who warned against voting for Trump, and urged a vote for Kamala Harris. It is, broadly speaking, the power base of the country. 

• John Kelly, former Trump chief of staff
• Liz Cheney, former Republican congresswoman
• Mark Milley, Trump’s former chairman of joint chiefs
• Mark Esper, former Trump Defense Secretary
• Mike Pence, former Trump Vice President
• Cassidy Hutchinson, former Trump aide 
• The New York Times; The Economist; The New Yorker; The Atlantic
• 10 former generals who called Trump “a danger to our national security and democracy.”
• 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists who warned “Trump’s economic plans would reignite inflation” –
• Matt Drudge
• Taylor Swift
• Bad Bunny
• Lady Gaga
• LeBron James
• The cast of “The West Wing”
• Jennifer Lopez
• Beyonce
• Eminem
• Cardi B

All of them, at the end of the day, were rejected. The man won the popular vote. It means that to most people in this country, he’s popular. 

 “This was a conquering of the nation not by force but with a permission slip,” wrote the New York Times’ Lisa Lerer in an incisive analysis. “Now, America stands on the precipice of an authoritarian style of governance never before seen in its 248-year history.”

She reminded readers of Trump’s promises: “He would use military force against his political opponents. He would fire thousands of career public servants. He would deport millions of immigrants in military-style roundups. He would crush the independence of the Department of Justice, use government to push public health conspiracies and abandon America’s allies abroad. He would turn the government into a tool of his own grievances, a way to punish his critics and richly reward his supporters.”

And indeed, Donald Trump appeared in Palm Beach last night and said this:  

“I will govern by a simple motto: promises made, promises kept.”

Kamala Harris: 66,455,012 votes (47.5%)

Donald Trump: 71,391,150 votes (51%)

Today, my email inbox and phone have exploded with people, actually all women, asking the same thing: How is this possible?

It is an understandable reaction. The decisive choice of Trump leaves in its wake a feeling of abandonment. A bewilderment that this country could choose someone so resoundingly negative, angry and full of vitriol. Don’t we want someone hopeful? Positive? Able to see the good in our country? 

Don’t the men of this country care about the women of this country? 

“I’m scared,” my 24-year-old niece texted me from Ohio. 

“Racism and misogyny are actually ok with a lot of Americans,” was the grim conclusion of a journalist friend. 

I keep seeing references to “low information” voters – people who voted without knowing very much about the issues or the candidates –  and that seems true. Otherwise we have to believe that those voting for Trump are actively choosing an authoritarian, giving up our hard-won agency to someone who has promised to be a dictator on “Day One.” 

The mind reels. What is it that voters really want? An authoritarian regime to replace democracy? That is what Trump has promised. He keeps saying he wants to save America: but from what? 

Another big factor we must assess this day after is the absolute mess our Fourth Estate has become. The polls, as I wrote a few days ago, were not to be believed. That was even more true as the pollsters clocked a Kamala Harris surge in the days before Nov. 5 that turned out to be totally wrong. Trump swept the swing states by two to three points, all while insulting Latinos and doubling down on his insults of everyone else. 

For all the effort poured into Pennsylvania, that must be seen as an abysmal failure. The anger we identified after eight successful years of Obama in the White House is back, or it never went away, but once again was unseen in the vast reporting on this election. 

After so many months of boosterism, I don’t even know how you can show up on MSNBC today. 

Our information system is broken. Full stop. I am looking at you, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel.  

And I look ahead, with trepidation, to a system increasingly run by the hyper-rich, by tech bros, instead of by the people, for the people.

The post Trump Back in Power: Broken Polling, Tech Bros and a Terrifying Truth appeared first on TheWrap.

This year the colors were particularly spectacular as I drove through the Chagrin Valley with my older brother near the home where we grew up, after visiting my father in the hospital. It was a moment of beauty and nostalgia as we prepared for what turned out to be the end. 

My father, 90, was a businessman and a lifelong Republican in a state that has been solidly Republican for the last two presidential election cycles. He shared a number of traits with Republican nominee Donald Trump – brash, confident, patriarchal. But one of the last political arguments at home during the summer surprisingly pitted my father against my older brother. My Dad had had it with Trump, calling him a serial liar, a lunatic (he used some choice words, more pungent in the original Yiddish), a narcissist and a danger to democracy. 

When my brother expressed skepticism of Kamala Harris’s resume, my father retorted: “What does it matter if we don’t have a democracy?” 

It was the first time I’d ever heard him express concern about the survival of democracy. The first time I’d heard him raise the issue of character as a decisive factor in voting. As a child I remember him dismissing criticism of Richard Nixon, whose foreign policy savvy he admired. Watergate was not a thing to him. I wasn’t yet 10 and far from becoming a journalist, but it still bothered me. 

But Dad’s anti-Trump views are not widely shared in my family, it turns out. The family sat together for the Jewish mourning ritual of shiva and since it was days before the election – no, we didn’t manage to avoid politics. (I did try.) 

An intense discussion with two of my cousins – one only mildly interested in politics, the other very much so – was an exercise in Trumpthink. At the time, Trump’s former chief of staff Jon Kelly had just unleashed a firestorm of debate, giving interviews to The New York Times and The Atlantic warning that his former boss was a “fascist,” and noting that Trump admired Hitler’s generals. 

My first cousin had not heard about the Kelly interviews. He was vaguely aware that Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former joint chiefs chairman Mark Milley had come out to warn against reelecting Trump. But hadn’t Trump fired all those guys, my cousin asked? Weren’t they just jealous and lashing out?

My cousin was concerned about the border, he said, and 20 million immigrants pouring in. I agreed that the border was a problem (but questioned the number) that needed to be addressed. But I noted that a bipartisan bill to address border issues was killed, explicitly, under Trump’s directive earlier this year, to help him win the election. Todd was skeptical this was true. 

Trump is a lot better on the economy, he stated, another view I heard a lot without much backup. I asked what policies specifically he liked. Todd was hard-pressed to come up with a specific. I noted that The Economist had written a cover story about America’s economy being the envy of the world. I pointed out that Trump favored tariffs, the very policy that helped drive our family’s company to ruin two years ago, because of tariffs on the company’s manufacturing in China. 

My cousin said he didn’t agree with the Republican position on abortion and supported women’s reproductive rights. But he didn’t see what that had to do with Trump. And then he asked if Kamala Harris was really Black. 

His mother quietly fidgeted on the couch next to me, uncomfortable hearing his views. She whispered: “He won’t change his mind.” The women in my family are pro-choice and not otherwise terribly political. But noting that even in this conservative state, abortion rights were ratified into the Ohio State Constitution by November 2023 Ohio Issue 1, and a previous six-week abortion ban was struck down by an Ohio judge in October 2024.

“We just disagree,” he said. I countered: “I don’t think we disagree. I think you are choosing to find justifications for Trump that don’t stand up to common sense.” 

My other cousin was more aware of the political details. He was incensed about illegal immigration. He doesn’t trust Kamala Harris on Israel. He thinks she’s inexperienced. (“What has she done?” I heard from more than one family member.) But when I asked about the risk to democracy and the violence of January 6, his response was this: Why didn’t the Capitol police shoot to kill when the protesters breached the door? I told him this was not an answer to Trump’s role in the violence of that day. He did not respond further. 

These conversations were maddeningly circular as I watched them reel off talking points of Fox News or Trump himself. We weren’t having a substantive argument, or an honest one, I told them. These were positions in search of reasoning to support them. 

I said to my first cousin that his support for Trump seems to be based on feelings, not facts. The sense that Trump – a familiar figure as an older white guy in a suit – makes him feel safe, despite the particulars. He didn’t dispute the point.          

Ohio went for Trump by 8 points in both 2016 and 2020; it’s no longer a swing state, apparently. My discussions with family there were similar to the interviews you see online with Trump supporters, people at rallies, random MAGA folks. It does not come down to facts, which seem fungible. It’s just a feeling. 

My father did not get to vote this cycle, but he used his own eyes and ears to draw a conclusion about this candidate who he believed, as I do, is a clear danger to our democracy. I interviewed Dad in October 2020 ahead of the last presidential election, and he had already turned decisively from Trump; he criticized Trump for demonizing immigrants, for ignoring injustice against Black people, for imposing tariffs. This year he was even angrier. He was not voting his pocketbook.

I am not a partisan or an activist. I don’t belong to any party, and as a journalist I do not advocate. My job is to observe and report. But as a citizen, like so many others, I cannot dismiss the evidence of my eyes and ears. As a woman, it seems obvious to say I want my rights back, and those of my daughter and her future children, and all the women in this country.

My family is precious to me, but it’s hard to wrap my head around these conversations. They’re not just a “weird uncle” at Thanksgiving, as Tim Walz might say. And most of them will not vote for Kamala Harris.  

Except the women. They’re not going back. 

The post Closing Arguments in Ohio – Trump’s All in the Family, Except for the Women appeared first on TheWrap.

Of course it’s the fact that the presidential election is neck and neck, evenly split between a very reasonable Democratic candidate and a terrifying Republican who is a convicted felon, a pathological liar and more cognitively questionable by the day.  

I don’t trust the polls anyway, and neither should you. They got it wildly wrong in 2016 when Hillary Clinton was assured of a win, mildly wrong in 2020 when Trump refused to accept the result and insanely wrong at midterms in 2022 – remember the “Red Wave” that did not happen? That.

But what is giving me stabbing stomach pains is the blow to our free press, which is the one thing we cannot as a country do without. Free speech. Critical voices. Independent inquiry into our government and elected officials.  

A free and vibrant press is the single, indispensable pillar of a democracy. And those institutions are at risk. 

The decision by the Los Angeles Times billionaire owner Patrick Soon-Shiong to quash an endorsement of Kamala Harris, matched by the decision by billionaire Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos to end the practice of endorsing any candidate, after the paper’s editorial board had prepared to endorse her as well, is a devastating blow to a free press.

Two of the country’s largest newspapers took their opinions off the table days before the election, even though their editorial boards wanted to be heard. Their doing so sends a terrible signal to other corporate leaders, and to other publishers. If they ducked provoking Trump, so will others.

It is legitimately scary. As historian Timothy Snyder has written, their decision on these endorsements is a kind of “anticipatory obedience,” a caving to Trump’s threats to retaliate against his perceived enemies before anything happens and without Trump even being elected. This is a perilous sign for democracy. 

“Do not obey in advance,” writes Snyder in his seminal pamphlet, “On Tyranny,” which is being widely quoted on social media. “Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.”

Hundreds of journalists in these newsrooms who have pushed back against their owners, thousands of readers who have cancelled their subscriptions in the past three days – are enraged that these billionaires would “bend the knee” to Trump out of fear of what he might do. 

The journalists at these papers have spent years showing their mettle, reporting on both Trump and Joe Biden in a sea of social media noise. They sift through facts, track down sources, try to identify misinformation – all under enormous pressure. Their work is essential at a time when voters do not know what information to trust. 

You trust the reporting of The Washington Post. And the LA Times. And a handful of others. Without them, our democracy is cut adrift. 

I worked at The Washington Post for eight years. And I have covered the ups and down at the Los Angeles Times under multiple owners for 20 years. I admit that I was relieved when Bezos bought the Post from the Graham family in 2013. And I was thrilled to see Soon-Shiong, a local L.A. resident, rescue (so I thought) the LA Times from the muddled mismanagement of Tribune. 

But these latest decisions give the lie to civic duty in billionaire ownership of our news institutions. Bezos has billion-dollar contracts in front of the U.S. government, and Soon-Shiong’s main source of wealth is his pharmaceutical research which depends on federal approval. 

Meanwhile both newspapers are losing massive amounts of money (The Post lost $100 million last year; the Times at least $50 million.) Both billionaires may well regret having bought them. 

The argument for billionaire ownership of newspapers was that the owners were so rich that they were immune from political threat or intimidation. The wealthy individual was making an investment in the community and gaining a tool of influence in the halls of state and national government, business and foreign policy. 

It gave them a seat at the table of power in a way that their money could not. But that ownership also confers obligation. That is a realization that seems to escape yet another billionaire who dabbles dangerously in media, X-owner and Trump booster Elon Musk. 

As I have argued for years, media is different. It’s not like a sports team or a packaged good or a car manufacturer. It brings with it a special responsibility to uphold honest, fact-based inquiry and have the courage to disseminate the results of those inquiries. 

It also means overseeing an unruly newsroom staff of opinionated, educated reporters and editors who will not be cowed or intimidated or bullied. 

Independently-owned media is essential in our age of disinformation. TheWrap remains fiercely independent, as we like to say. And all we do is news. Feel free to support us with a subscription, it’s worth the investment. 

But as for other publications – let us hope our billionaire problem does not spread further.

The post Billionaires, Newspapers and Politics – A Dangerous Mix appeared first on TheWrap.