Move Over MAGA Media! The Old Guard Is Owning the Trump 2.0 Story Welcome to the weekend! I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit thinking about the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. That’s because for years, as a media reporter at the New York Observer, Politico, and HuffPost, I considered the weekend festivities to be a must-stop on the beat, an opportunity to take the pulse of the press corps. On my mind this week was the 2017 dinner, which Donald Trump, a few months into his first term, opted to skip. But journalists still attended, like then Washington Post editor Marty Baron, who mentioned how “people are here out of a sense of solidarity.”
So what about the first dinner of a second Trump term? Natalie Korach finds that, despite being an ominous time for the media, and in particular the Correspondents’ Association, the glitzy dinner—and weekend party blitz—will carry on as usual. Perhaps gathering together is what’s needed in a second term because, as one reporter tells her, “the solidarity of the press corps is going to be really tested.” The precarious state of the Fourth Estate in Trump 2.0 was also the subject of this week’s Inside the Hive, where editor in chief Radhika Jones, executive editor Claire Howorth, and I discussed the notion of partying amid Trump’s punitive press attacks.
It’s not all doom and gloom for the media, as Paul Farhi reports how it’s been traditional players, like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, that have been breaking the big stories, even as pro-MAGA outlets increase their presence in the briefing room. “It’s reporting, reporting, reporting,” says Times managing editor Carolyn Ryan. “Getting a scoop is hard. It takes a lot of effort.”
Also on the media front, before tuning in tomorrow night to David Frost Vs., the first of a six-part docuseries on MSNBC, check out Clive Irving’s piece on the role Walter Cronkite played in Frost’s infamous confrontation with Richard Nixon.
—Michael Calderone, editor |
