 ⁌ TVHot mic: A bizarre pre-interview incident at MSNBC this week prompted internal speculation about the future of the network’s president, Rashida Jones. According to two MSNBC staffers with knowledge of the incident, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made remarks to MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle suggesting that Jones could leave the network soon or be elevated into a higher corporate role. Ruhle reminded Benioff that he was on a hot mic, and the two promptly dropped the topic. Executives at MSNBC and NBCUniversal told Semafor that Benioff was simply speculating, and no moves are imminent.
MSNBC is considering revamping part of the network’s weekend lineup with a roundtable weekend morning show… ⁛ News Kelsey Russell via TikTokPrint: The new TikTok accessory is … the newspaper. Badged: A handful of trans journalists started an impromptu game of “misgender bingo” at the recent NLGJA convention, adding a pronoun sticker to their badge every time an attendee referred to them by a pronoun different from the one printed on their conference ID. They ran out of stickers. Process: The Wall Street Journal announced this week that its top enterprise editor, Matthew Rose, was leaving the paper, as the Times’s Katie Robertson scooped. The move followed years of widespread internal grumbling and frustration about Rose’s editorial sensibilities — and a recent critical note about the difficulties of publishing enterprise stories at the Journal from former WSJ reporter Byron Tau, who recently departed for Robert Allbritton’s new journalism nonprofit. (In a text, Tau said he didn’t want to discuss private communication but he was “nothing but grateful for my nine years at the WSJ.“) Parting words: One of the most respected reporters on the China beat is leaving journalism. Keith Zhai covered the country for more than 20 years for the South China Morning Post, Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, and was part of a Pulitzer-winning team at Reuters for coverage of the Hong Kong protests. He’s heading to the strategic advisory firm Global Counsel to beef up their China team. Zhai’s advice for reporters covering China? Proximity matters. Don’t be daunted by the scale. And, he told Semafor, “being an expert on China today isn’t about amassing a laundry list of facts, but rather understanding evolving narratives and subtleties.” ⁜ Tech Vivek Ramaswamy via TikTokTikTok flop: Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy made a bit of news by starting a TikTok account despite American skepticism of the Chinese-owned app. But the app’s young audience isn’t impressed with his plan to strip voting rights from citizens under 24, and his comments are a mix of protest — “me and all my 200 friends were going to vote for you but you’re right about people under 25 not voting so we just won’t,” read one with more than 6,000 likes — and generationally confusing sex jokes that young Semafor reporters had to explain to us, which nobody wants. Subscale: “RIP Traffic,” writes Brian Morrissey, as even Bustle has given up on scale. Man bites dog: The private equity guys running Yahoo are … doing a pretty good job, The Information reports. Facial recognition: Perhaps the creepiest bit of Kashmir Hill’s new book, “Your Face Belongs to Us,” comes when she hires a detective to use Clearview AI to spy on her — and finds that it’s spying on him too. That takes her to the heart of her story: “a small company with mysterious founders and an unfathomably large database.” Pay up: Podcast hosts and creators are furious at Kast Media, a company that places ads for podcasts, for being very, very late on payments. ✦ MarketingCasting call: Octavia Spencer stars as Mother Nature in Apple’s big new spot, also featuring CEO Tim Cook as himself. The Drum’s Gordon Young declared it cringe, the Washington Post found the claims a bit murky, but how often is anyone talking about a spot like this? Fazed: Eyebrows raised in 2021 when Sports Illustrated put the esports company FaZe Clan on the cover, given that the CEO of SI’s parent Arena Group also sat on FaZe’s board. Skeptics felt vindicated last week when Bloomberg reported that FaZe Clan has “run out of hype” and is near collapse. |