What Future, CNN?

Back in 2013, media critic Brian Stelter published a book “Top of the Morning,” that was later adapted into the dramatic 2019 television series, “The Morning Show.” 

These days, Stelter appears as an occasional guest on CNN as part of that network’s attempt to cover another drama — the ownership change that has thrown its future into doubt.

Tech billionaire David Ellison, a close buddy of Donald Trump, is close to completing the merger that would bring CNN under his control.

The much smaller and less profitable CBS already is controlled by Ellison and the result has been disastrous, from a journalistic perspective.

But there is far more at stake wit CNN than simply the survival of a media company. More than any other network, CNN has provided critical, consistent, accurate coverage of the Trump era — much to Trump’s dismay.

According to the New York Times, “Mr. Ellison has not publicly detailed what he has in store for CNN. But the network’s newsroom is wary of his conspicuous coziness with Mr. Trump and the prospect that he may assign some oversight of CNN to Bari Weiss, his pick to run CBS News after he bought Paramount last year.

“Anderson Cooper, the channel’s biggest star, has told colleagues at CNN that he does not want to work for Ms. Weiss, two people familiar with his remarks said. Mr. Cooper, who overlapped with Ms. Weiss at CBS as a correspondent at “60 Minutes,” left that show this spring after 20 years.

“As the merger approaches, the 18th-floor Manhattan office of Amy Entelis, the CNN executive in charge of on-air talent, has turned into something of a psychiatrist’s couch for anchors and correspondents, who often drop in to air their anxieties about the looming changes.”

What is at stake here, of course, is not only whether CNN will remain free to accurately report on Trump’s push for authoritarian power. 

It is freedom of the press, one of our few tools for stopping this existential threat to our democracy.

HEADLINES:

• Trump says the U.S. and Iran will meet in Qatar after weekend attacks (NPR)

• U.S.-Iran ceasefire could go up in flames (Axios)

• U.S., Iran Carry Out New Strikes, Testing Fragile Ceasefire (WSJ)

• Israel’s military and tech industry race to counter Hezbollah’s latest threat (CNN)

• With time running out, Trump digs in on changing midterm election rules (WP)

• Postmaster general’s remarks on mail ballots stoke fears among voting rights advocates (The Hill)

• Trump allows dairy farms a path for migrant labor, upsetting anti-immigration camp (WP)

• A ‘heat dome’ is driving dangerous heat across the U.S. into the July 4 weekend (NPR)

• Biden calls Trump ‘a loser’, portraying him as incompetent, corrupt and vain (Guardian)

• America split from monarchy 250 years ago. Trump’s presidency is testing how far it’s come (AP)

• Dean Cain Hits Back After His State Fair Photo Sparks Low Attendance Claims (Newsweek)

• If you think China needs to dethrone U.S. dollar, you don’t understand how it is waging global currency war (CNBC)

• Venezuela Is Desperately Searching for 50,000 Missing After Earthquakes (WSJ)

• Two boys rescued from Venezuela earthquake rubble after days of being trapped (BBC)

• Three Firefighters Die as Wildfires Ravage Utah and Colorado (NYT)

• Why the nation’s founding document is barely legible (WP)

• What news reports from 1600s tell us about life in Mughal India (BBC)

• ‘Tech firms are losing the public’: social media age bans near tipping point (Guardian)

• AI jitters meet a jobs report and falling oil prices: What to watch this week (Yahoo)

• German World Cup Fan Can’t Believe How Different Real U.S. Is From Depiction In Pixar’s ‘Cars’ (Onion)

Democracy

 

                                                         

HEADLINES:

• Chaos Came to CBS News. What’s in Store for CNN? (NYT)

• Iran attacks Bahrain and Kuwait following US strikes and threatens to halt talks to end the war (AP)

• Iran hits targets linked to the U.S. (Reuters)

• US-Iran tensions flare over the vital Strait of Hormuz (CNN)

• Mideast Fighting Widens With Attacks on Bahrain, Hormuz Tanker (WSJ)

• Deal with Trump hands Iran economic lifeline as leaders eye postwar gains (WP)

• UK maritime agency raises Strait of Hormuz threat level after oil tanker reports being struck (Euronews)

• Venezuela earthquake death count rises (Reuters)

• Window Narrowing to Find Survivors as Quake Death Toll Surpasses 1,400 (NYT)

• Can J. D. Vance Serve Both God and Donald Trump? (New Yorker)

• Trump taps Lance Schroyer to lead ICE, agency at center of deportation campaign (WP)

• Has America Lived Up to Its Founding Promise? (Reveal)

• Trump’s pick is favored in Louisiana. Her opponent is betting on a grassroots revolt. (Politico)

• S.F. police, marchers clash on Market Street during Trans March (SFC)

• The man who wants Netanyahu’s job (Reuters)

• Yale Seeks Trump Administration Deal as It Faces Sprawling Investigation (NYT)

• Trump tries out midterms message that focuses on ‘communists’ (WP)

• Rage Against the Machine (Journal of the Plague Years)

• How Shepard Fairey Created TIME’s ‘Our America’ Cover (Time)

• Scientists Think They’ve Uncovered the 15-Million-Year-Old Origin of Laughter (404media)

• The hidden cost of AI coding: workplace paralysis (BI)

• Anthropic Thinks Its Own Success Is Key to Making AI Safe (Wired)

• The Three Chatbot Behaviors That Can Drive Humans to Delusional Thinking (WSJ)

• The U.S. government will decide who gets to use the latest American AI technology (WP)

• Prize Hog Drops Out Of Great American State Fair Due To Event’s Political Nature (Onion)

A Biblical Dispute

Authorities in Texas have voted to require that the Bible be taught in schools. They’ve already forced educators to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

As far as the Bible as a textbook is concerned, it contains lots of stories. Some are well told, others less so. There is a great deal of redundancy.

The stories are anecdotal in nature, as the authors provide little in the way of documentation. From a journalistic perspective, you could say the book would benefit from a strong edit.

But all of that said, I think it is generally a good thing for everyone to know about the stories in the Bible and their meaning. It is an essential part of Judeo-Christian history, and therefore critical for understanding how we got from there to here.

Students need to be capable of critical thinking before taking on this task. High school or college would be the ideal place to study the Bible, I believe, not elementary school as in Texas. 

And the problem with the Texas approach is that it blurs, if not violates the separation of church and state, which is a cornerstone of our democracy.

Politically, the Texas initiative is part of a conservative push to suppress religious diversity and impose a form of Christian nationalism on everybody. 

“Kids of all faith backgrounds and no faith are served by Texas schools and they should all feel welcome in Texas schools,” said Elva Mendoza, legislative communications associate for the progressive Texas Freedom Network. “But this is sending the message to children that one and only one religious text — a Christian one — is worthy of making this required reading list.”

Ultimately, the legality of the Texas approach will probably be decided by the courts.

HEADLINES:

• Mideast Fighting Widens With Attacks on Bahrain, Hormuz Tanker (WSJ)

• U.S. Military Strikes Missile and Drone Sites in Iran (NYT)

• Hezbollah rejects Israel-Lebanon framework agreement (Al Jazeera)

• Trump says Iran violated ceasefire with drone attacks on Strait of Hormuz ships (CNBC)

• Texas board approves Bible stories as required reading in public schools (NPR)

• Texas Public School Students Will Be Required to Read the Bible (NYT)

• Why Americans should fear lame-duck Donald Trump (The Hill)

• Nursing homes, factory owners and immigrants brace for fallout from Supreme Court ruling (WP)

• In a blistering dissent in the Mullin v. Doe case, Justice Elena Kagan put President Donald Trump’s most racist and inflammatory remarks over the last decade about Haitians into permanent record, blasting her conservative colleagues on the bench for refusing to “put them in print.” Meanwhile, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that “people will die” as a result of the court’s ruling that strips legal rights from asylum-seekers. [HuffPost]

• How the Supreme Court Decision Upends Life for Thousands of Migrants (NYT)

• Inflation jumps again with gas prices running higher than in past years (AP)

• Venezuela reels from earthquakes, as death toll more than doubles (NPR)

• Ex-Trump adviser John Bolton pleads guilty to mishandling classified information (NBC)

• Heat wave blasting Europe is the worst ever recorded, researchers say (WP)

• The killer heat engulfing Europe would have been "virtually ‌impossible" without climate change (Reuters)

• Global imbalances have little to do with Europe’s industrial woes (Economist)

• Sanders releases trove of internal HHS emails showing RFK Jr. pressured CDC over vaccine messaging (The Hill)

• California Will Vote on a Billionaire Tax. Billionaires Aren’t Happy. (NYT)

• What science tells us about the health risks of Roundup (PBS)

• As Trump Dismantles USAID, Washington Embraces Octagon Diplomacy (SmirkingChimp)

• Trump May Have Damaged Reflecting Pool by Having Motorcade Drive Over It (Newsweek)

• When your local reflecting pool or pond turns green with algae, don’t reach for chemicals – nature has better solutions (The Conversation)

• Mistrial for Man Accused of Starting One of California’s Worst Fires (NYT)

• Vance dismisses Watergate scandal, says ‘deep state’ went after Nixon (WP)

• Why big AI labs are hiring so many philosophers (Economist)

• AI leaders would like to stop racing. Let’s make that possible. (The Hill)

• In AI race vs. U.S., China eyes victory in lower prices and broader appeal (WP)

• Travis Kelce Utters 2 Syllables Of Wedding Venue Name Before Tranq Dart Strikes Neck (The Onion)

Friday Mix

HEADLINES:

• Iran Attacks Cargo Ship, Testing Trump’s Deal to Reopen Strait (WSJ)

• Federal Judge Strikes Key Parts of Trump Order Restricting Mail Voting (NYT)

• Meet the megadonors pouring more than $1.3 billion into the 2026 election (WP)

• Supreme Court allows immigration officials to turn away asylum seekers at the border (Politico)

• Trump’s Mass Deportation Machine Won Big at the Supreme Court (Slate)

• Venezuela earthquakes live: Hundreds killed, thousands injured, many buried (Al Jazeera)

• Reflecting Pool liner was cut with a sharp knife or razor, National Park Service says (PBS)

• Oil tankers exit Strait of Hormuz despite Iran threats (The Hill)

• Senate walks back rebuke of Trump over Iran war (CNN)

• Why Trump is so annoyed by Republican discord on Iran war (BBC)

• Supreme Court ruling blocks thousands of lawsuits against maker of Roundup weedkiller (NBC)

• Vermont is first state to ban paraquat, a weed killer linked to Parkinson’s disease (ABC)

• Trump Is Making the 250th Small (Atlantic)

• Crowds Walk Out of Trump’s State Fair Speech, Video Appears to Show (Newsweek)

• UPS is losing ground to FedEx (Economist)

• Afghanistan’s Taliban imposes smartphone ban on government officials (MoneyControl)

• Droughts are transforming the Turkish landscape with massive sinkholes (BBC)

• Scientists have just unlocked the secrets of an ancient scroll torched by Mount Vesuvius (WP)

• Meta culpa (BI)

• As scientists seek clues to longevity, the oldest living trio of siblings in the world may help them. (Reuters)

• How a New York race became the first front in the AI industry’s midterm war (WP)

• Big Companies Aim to Ease A.I. Transition for American Workers (NYT)

• World Models vs VLAs: The Rift Dividing Physical AI (The Information)

• Everyone is worried about AI killing jobs. She’s testing a fix-it plan. (WP)

• Could A.I. Find Brazil’s Next Pelé? (NYT)

• French Reporter Illustrates Extreme Heat By Flambéing Cherries Jubilee On Sidewalk (Onion)

Land of Immigrants

They come from every corner of the world, carrying flags and whistles, banners and bells.

They’re wearing the jerseys of their heroes and they are here to cheer them on with songs and chants and wild celebrations when they score goals and win games.

They are livening up our bars and restaurants. They turn up at baseball games, looking slightly out of place.

For the most part, they are good-natured and curious about Americans.

They wonder how we can be led by a man like Trump, who stokes fear about foreigners and spreads rumors about Haitians eating our pets. (Meanwhile, the actual Haitians rooting for their heroes could not be more delightful guests.)

Welcome to America, land of contradictions. Where the Supreme Court sided with Trump today to stop those coming not in joy, but in desperation, at our borders.

Go elsewhere, they said.

HEADLINES:

• Supreme Court Allows Trump to Block Asylum Seekers at Border (NYT)

• Trump cancels signing of landmark bipartisan bill aimed at lowering housing costs (BBC)

• Trump gets into shouting match during closed-door lunch with GOP senators (CNN)

• Federal Judge Bars ICE From Making Arrests in Immigration Courts (NYT)

• Presidential power takes center stage in the US Supreme Court's home stretch. (Reuters)

• 2 Major Earthquakes Hit Venezuela (NYT)

• Why Trump’s algae problem is much bigger than the Reflecting Pool (WP)

• Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit Alleging Roundup Weedkiller Caused Cancer (NYT)

• China’s Assertions of Authority Over Foreign Ships Near Taiwan Draw U.S. Rebuke (WSJ)

• Texas water officials seek more funding as crisis worsens, costs soar: ‘This is not going to stop’ (The Hill)

• Power outages hit France as it records hottest day since measurements began (BBC)

• Trump’s acting chief of national intelligence fires 6 political appointees, removes dozens of career officials, sources say (CNN)

• Why reporters don’t belong in front of grand juries (WP)

• Would Claude Refuse an Illegal Military Order? (Atlantic)

• Behind the Curtain: Global AI wars (Axios)

• Are ChatGPT and other AI bots politically biased? We tested them. (WP)

• U.S. Presses Meta to Agree to A.I. Reviews as Security Concerns Rise (NYT)

• Beer Delivery Driver Points Trembling Shotgun As Crowd Of Scottish Soccer Fans Close In (Onion)

All News Is Local

Some news stories are national and some are international in scope. Some news stories are regional and some are state. But think about it — all news is local.

Take the green algae in the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. It may be receiving national, even international coverage but it is a local story for Washington, D.C. and hyperlocal to the Washington Mall.

Every story has to start somewhere.

Which brings me to my friends at Local NEWS Network, headquartered in Durango, Colorado. LNN has recently launched its redesigned websites serving small towns across the U.S.

You can check out the Durango site or watch the LNN.news Overview Video. You also can read my essay from a year ago about the importance of small town news.

***

Many people now realize that the closure of small-town newspapers has created a vast news desert covering virtually all of rural America. And that this has had dire consequences, in the form of conspiracy theories, lies and misinformation.

While it may be a stretch to claim this has led directly to the rise of MAGA, the lack of vibrant small-town journalism certainly has been a contributing factor.

Among the various efforts to do something about this problem, many take a national, non-profit, top-down approach, whereas the Local NEWS Network, based in Durango, CO, takes a local, for-profit, bottom-up approach. Through its digital network, LNN delivers local news and local advertising to communities that otherwise would be part of the news desert.

This week, LNN’s Laurie Sigillito published an article on LinkedIn titled “Advertising in Small Towns: It’s About Trust, Not Clicks.”

In it, she says: “Attempts to introduce advertising-supported digital media in small towns and rural areas hit up against the reality that the metrics used to measure effectiveness nationally—impressions, CTRs and programmatic segmentation—are all optimized for dense urban markets.”

Meanwhile, she continues, “What actually works in small towns is visibility. You need to be seen by everyone, not just target segments. Neighbors talk to neighbors and word gets around town organically.”

Her article pinpoints the main business reason national efforts to succeed in small towns fail more often than succeed. “Our conclusion is that national ad tools don’t work in small towns. The goal here is not more data, it’s more connection. Rural advertising should feel more like a handshake than a sales funnel—personal, human, and built to last.”

I’ve thought about the news desert problem a lot and have concluded that to re-establish media in localized settings, we need to address the business plan first, then get to the question of content,

LNN does that. 

***

Nieman reports that local news sites across the country are in trouble because people are “abandoning them for social media.”

By basing its content in video, LNN may be able to counter this trend. LNN is built to scale.

HEADLINES:

• Senate Votes to Check Trump’s War Powers, Rebuking Him on Iran (NYT)

• Drowning deaths soar in France as Europe buckles in peak of heatwave (BBC)

• Dozens drown, schools close, heat records set to be annihilated: Europe has a major heat problem and it’s only getting worse (CNN)

• U.S. and Iran Offer Conflicting Accounts of Nuclear Discussions (NYT)

• Pentagon seeks $80 billion from Congress for Iran war (AP)

• Mamdani Allies Sweep House Primaries in Big Night for Left-Wing Democrats (NYT)

• Trump’s botched reflecting pool becomes 2,028ft metaphor (Guardian)

• U.S. Bets Billions of Dollars in Low-Cost Loans Can Revive Nuclear Power (WSJ)

• Rural America’s farms are already being crushed by an economic crisis. They now face the risk of a ‘mini-Dust Bowl’ as a rare Super El Niño looms (Fortune)

• With Win in Washington, Socialists Have Momentum in Urban America (NYT)

• THEY ARE DONE Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) said she’s “done” with the Republican Party, which she said has turned into the “America LAST” party. Her comments came after right-wing commentator and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said he was done with the party after voting Republican his entire life. [HuffPost]

• Britain’s lost decade (Axios)

• Israeli authorities and security forces deliberately targeted Palestinian children, resulting in genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza, and war crimes in the occupied West Bank, an independent U.N. inquiry said. (Reuters)

• Inside Japan’s billion-dollar quest to help a sleep-starved nation rest (WP)

• China’s humanoid robots moving in as Asia’s workforce ages out (Asia Times)

• New York’s primary went from celebrity contest to AI proxy war (WP)

• GOP Urges Democrats To Tone Down Rhetoric Used To Quote President Verbatim (Onion)

Getting Wired.6

In the autumn of 1997, along with the arrival of cooler weather and light rain in San Francisco came the final plans for a house-cleaning at Wired Inc. The in-house coup d’é·tat would result in the removal of scores of people, including the founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe.

In their stead, the company was going to be dismantled and sold off in pieces. The founders would be rewarded with a fair amount of compensation for their efforts, so they would be “fine.” Not so much everyone else.

Near the top of the hit list was my name. The very fact that made me irreplaceable in the old order — my relationship with Louis — made me all too disposable in the new one.

So, on a late afternoon when the sun was going down to the west, suddenly and strangely there were no further meetings on my calendar. It was wide open. Then I was summoned to Louis’s office. 

I walked in to see three people waiting, none of smiling. Just three senior execs stiff and grim in manner. I was thanked for my service, given a small severance check, and summarily dismissed. 

Louis was one of the three and he looked immensely sad. But he had nothing to say. This was not of his doing. And that, I suppose, is the end of my story at Wired.

Unlike many of the other difficult transitions in my life, I had prepared myself emotionally as much as possible for this one. I’d packed up my family pictures and prepared my goodbye message. But as I drove away from 660 Third Street, I realized you can't really prepare yourself for losing something you love. 

EPILOGUE

Perhaps the most significant accomplishment during my tenure on Third Street was Wired News, which survived the purge in 1997 and exists to this day.

And in one of life’s strange ironic twists, my oldest daughter, who would soon become an award-winning journalist herself, worked as as an intern at Wired News during the first decade of the new millennium.

Apparently none of her colleagues knew that her father had been one of the executives involved in creating their company or what that experience had been like. 

Many years later, now that our society has become divided by conspiracy theories, fake news and social media demagogues, I remember how hard in the 1990s a few of us tried to prevent that outcome.

I’d be less than truthful if I said we fully anticipated how bad the media collapse would turn out to be. We saw the danger signs, but we could not imagine the world as it’s turned out to be.

The problem is once the old media world — like Humpty Dumpty — teetered and fell off of the great digital wall of the Internet and burst into a thousand pieces, how could we ever put it together again?

The answer is, sadly, I don’t know how we can.

HEADLINES:

• First Round of U.S.-Iran Talks Ends With High Hopes and Big Challenges (NYT)

• U.S.-Iran talks set ‘good foundation’ for deal to end war, Vance says (NBC)

• Treasury Department authorizes Iranian oil sales through August (CNBC)

• Trump’s Iran agreement embraces sanctions relief, a policy he and his team once denounced (CNN)

• Congressional Democrats Warn Pulte Against Mass Firings (NYT)

• 5 arrested for vandalism in connection with Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool (The Hill)

• Why Trump has been attacking the Supreme Court, with 3 key rulings ahead (WP)

• Staggering amounts of fentanyl hit streets as the DEA watched and took no action, records show (AP)

• Judge Finds Justice Dept. Overreach in Subpoenas to Minnesota Officials (NYT)

• Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he would resign, with a new leader to be in place by the time parliament returns in September, paving the way for Britain to have its seventh leader ‌in 10 years. (Reuters)

• The Man Who Couldn’t Do It (Atlantic)

• China Could Win Taiwan Without Fighting (Foreign Affairs)

• Common Vaccine Linked to 24% Lower Dementia Risk in Major Study (ScienceAlert)

• Germany’s media rocked by AI scandal (DW)

• How Anthropic may have talked itself into an AI export ban (ArsTechnica)

• U.K. Weighs Social Media Ban Of Everyone Except Old Men Who Grow Big Vegetables (Onion)