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What Happens in Vegas: MS NOW’s Marcus Mabry, Ari Melber, and Jen Psaki, on the main stage at NAB in Las Vegas, Monday with Breaker. (Photo: NAB)
Welcome to the latest edition of Breaker. If this email has been forwarded, you can subscribe here and send your questions and complaints here. If you have a tip contact the 24/7 Breaker Tip Hotline via text or Signal # 551 655 2343. Anonymity guaranteed!
In tonight’s edition, the bizarre feud between two White House foreign press corps, the White House Foreign Media Group (WHFMG) and the White House Foreign Press Group (WHFPG), has come to a head with the White House press office taking drastic measures. This comes after one of the warring groups made an extraordinary (even by their standards) accusation against the other. We have all the details below.
Also, tonight, the Washington Post is pushing ahead with a new payment initiative, a sidestep to the traditional subscriber model, and we also name the latest defection from the Wall Street Journal to follow Charles Forelle, joining Bari Weiss at CBS News.
Finally, if you’ve had issues receiving Breaker via Gmail, you're not alone. Gmail recently tightened its filters, causing some users to receive Breaker in their Promotions tab. To make sure you get Breaker, move us to your primary tab from promotions. You can also add the sender email [email protected] to your favourites. It will all help ensure you receive all the saucy scooplets to your Inbox every Tuesday and Thursday evening.
Mentioned tonight: Tom Cibrowski, Larry Ellison, Bari Weiss, Charles Forelle, Karl Wells, Suzi Watford, Will Lewis, Laura Poitras, Alexandra Bruell, Brian Steinberg, Casey Wasserman, Michael Grynbaum, Benjamin Mullin, Stephanie Kaloi, Charlotte Tobitt, Jana Winter, Jacob Donnelly, Marcus Mabry, Jen Psaki, Ari Melber, Will Payne, Anna Dubenko, Mohammed Moawad, Janice Min, Karen Chupka, Dan Wolfman, Sean Walsh, Elaine Low, Natalie Jarvey, Alison Brower, Tucker DeSaulnier, Hanna Hensler, Monica Chou and more.
What Happens in Vegas … Ends Up In Breaker
On Monday, Breaker was joined by MS NOW’s Jen Psaki, Ari Melber, and Marcus Mabry at NAB in Las Vegas for a lively discussion around the MS rebrand and their upcoming community-first news app.
“People don't watch the news. People watch people,” Melber told the live audience, “and that's timeless in the sense that as long as people have been preparing the news in any video format, that's what they're tapping into, those people, and the dynamics have obviously changed.”
While MS NOW has confirmed that they have a new direct-to-consumer digital product in the works, they were eager to stress that it won’t be yet another streaming app.
In the meantime, their focus has been on face-to-face community building through a series of MS NOW live events with plenty of committed, linear MS NOW fans eager to attend.
The Beat Goes On … The MS NOW crew told Breaker about their new membership product that will launch later this year.
“I think what I've learned from going to these events and participating in these events is that it's not just an audience of people who are watching. It's really a community of people who we're a part of,” Psaki told NAB, which was part of Ankler Media’s media and entertainment programming for the event.
“And when you attend these events, as we both have and spoken at them and visited with fans and met with people, you feel like you're experiencing them, engaging with each other and living through a moment that they have questions about, maybe they're struggling with aspects of, and that's a really cool and interesting thing.”
And it’s the so-called “super fans” MS NOW is hoping to service with the new digital community app they expect to launch later this year.
“Now we'll take that relationship with super fans and translate it into a digital platform where you can actually connect with our talent,” Mabry told the panel. “Take that live event space where we see enthusiasm and take it. Make it an everyday experience.”
Proving their superfans are everywhere, both Melber and Psaki were mobbed by attendees at the end of the panel, while Breaker’s biggest super fan (who definitely isn't also our mother in Melbourne) sent a thumbs-up emoji and offered to buy him matching socks before next year's NAB show.
No Payne, No Gain: The New York Post’s Will Payne and The New York Times’ Anna Dubenko. (Photo: NAB)
On Tuesday, we were back to moderate a panel with the New York Post’s Will Payne, the New York Times’ Anna Dubenko, and Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Moawad, where questions about subscription fatigue and news deserts came flying thick and fast from the audience.
White House Press Corps Clash
(Exclusive.) A wild accusation has resulted in the White House press office interjecting in the war between two rival White House press factions, which escalated this week.
The recently established White House Foreign Media Group (WHFMG) has accused the long-standing White House Foreign Press Group (WHFPG) of having a …
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⁘ As credited in The New York Times, CNBC, Axios, The New York Post, CNN, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and more.
The Breaker Pod With Jennifer Welch: Why She Turned Down Offers From WBD and CBS
The Breaker podcast is back with a bang for season three. This week, we sat down with podcast host and media disruptor, Jennifer Welch, at The View high above Times Square (cheers to Danny Meyer and his team at Union Square Hospitality for inviting us down.)
Welch, co-host of the hit podcast “I’ve Had It”, didn’t exactly set out to build a political media platform. After her reality TV show was canceled, the pod started as a place to vent about everything from slow walkers to airport speakerphone users to over-the-top gender reveal parties. But as her audience grew, she drew a hard line when it came to independence, revealing she had turned down numerous offers from billionaire-owned legacy media outlets.
“Recently, Angie and I wrote a book, 'Life is a lazy susan of shit sandwiches,' and Warner Bros. came to us and wanted to buy it to make a sitcom, but Warner Bros. is owned by Larry Ellison, who is a fascist, and I said no, we said no, we’re not doing it.”
Welch also revealed she turned down an offer from CBS to promote her upcoming book, saying she didn’t want to “cheapen” her voice by aligning with corporate interests.
“I would rather be able to tell my audience that I’m walking the walk and talking the talk. I would rather be able to say we’re going to promote this book via independent means outside of the oligarchs that have all of this fucking money.”
Catch more in this week's episode of The Breaker Pod. Make sure you check us out and subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your pods.
WaPay As You Go
(Exclusive.) The Washington Post is trying to put a tumultuous period behind itself that saw the brutal layoffs of three hundred journalists and Sir Will Lewis’ sudden Super Bowl weekend departure.
It’s been left in part by Lewis’ Brit pack of execs to pick up the pieces, including Chief Strategy Officer Suzi Watford and Chief Revenue Officer Karl Wells (both of whom worked with Lewis at Dow Jones.)
On Thursday, Wells told staffers that after months of testing, they were rolling out…
Support fearless independent journalism.
The rest of this newsletter is for paid subscribers.
⁘ Unlock full access to our twice-weekly newsletter and archive.
⁘ As credited in The New York Times, CNBC, Axios, The New York Post, CNN, Bloomberg, The Guardian, and more.