Media

1. Weiss’ 3 challenges
2. Mixed Signals
3. Eyes on the Prize
4. LAT IPO
5. Striking out from Outkick?

Shortform videos are the dominant medium of this moment, and the defining imagery of Trump’s term, on X, TikTok, and Instagram, is of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers confronting people on the streets of American cities.

These videos lack context, and are often confusing. Some show a pastor being shot with a pepper ball, a photographer pushed to the ground at a New York immigration court being carried out on a stretcher, and a person in a frog costume being hosed with pepper spray. Others show conservative media figures riding along with DHS to confront protesters. All compete with DHS’ own slick short-form content.

What are the actual politics of this? Trump and many Republicans still believe immigration is an issue that plays to his strengths, though polls suggest Americans disapprove of the most aggressive interior immigration enforcement against people without criminal records and his crackdown on cities. The reaction among the influencer class has been pretty one-sided: Celebrities from Chappell Roan to Joe Rogan have seen the videos and been disturbed by them.

As analysts try to figure out how this new medium shapes the message, and how our new video age shapes politics, these magnified street fights — gripping and out-of-context — seem to be shaping not just the image of the Trump administration, but how it governs.

Also this week: Bari Weiss’ first week at CBS, what’s driving the LA Times’ IPO plans, a Fox star contemplates striking out on his own (again), and how AI is changing Alison Roman’s recipes.

What Bari Weiss needs to do at CBS

CBS News’ new editor-in-chief faces three challenges, Max writes: The first is leading the network through the generational, structural changes that have foiled a generation of TV news executives. The second is getting a wary newsroom to trust her. And the third will be building trust with audiences. Weiss is a veteran of the op-ed pages and will remain on as chief of The Free Press, a news commentary website Paramount bought for $150 million. The Free Press barely covers some of the domestic stories that tend to drive television news and mass interest, a Semafor analysis shows. The Free Press’ coverage since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel has focused intensely on the war in Gaza, but if the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel holds, Max writes, where will The Free Press direct the majority of its editorial attention?

Trump’s inevitable Nobel

“There’s a sweet genre of videos of American professors getting surprised in the middle of the night by the news they’ve won the Nobel Prize,” Ben Smith writes in his Washington View column this week, which Media readers are getting early.

The institute behind the prizes is making content, too: In a behind-the-scenes Instagram video, its director, a 63-year-old sociologist named Kristian Berg Harpviken, calls this year’s Peace Prize winner, his voice cracking as he reads her citation. “I watched the video and thought: There is no way these people can stand up to” President Donald Trump, Ben writes.

Members of the Nobel Committee are “humanizing themselves — and at times responding to the great engagement numbers their social media teams deliver when they trade prestige for likes. … Instagram fans may enjoy the Norwegian sociologist; for Trump and anyone looking to pressure the committee, personalizing it just offers an attack surface.”

Mixed Signals

Alison Roman was one of digital media’s first food stars — she’s had recipes go viral since 2018 and an infamous “cancellation” in 2020. Now, with her latest cookbook, Something From Nothing, she’s trying to move away from life on the internet. This week, Ben and Max bring on the chef and author to talk about food media, the value of a physical cookbook in a digital world, and how AI is influencing her recipes. They also talk about why cooking and her new book are the “antithesis of the internet.”

LA Times’ cash crunch

The Los Angeles Times’ private stock sale has all the hallmarks of a scramble for cash. Patrick Soon-Shiong’s media outfit aims to raise up to $500 million ahead of a planned 2027 IPO, pitching itself as a growthy combination of The New York Times, Twitch, and Vice at its peak. Soon-Shiong will take $100 million of the new shares in exchange for forgiving a loan he made to the Times. It’s expensive money — its dividends, if paid in cash instead of the scrip the Times is offering, would have eaten up 15% of last year’s revenue — and a bridge to an IPO that the company isn’t yet ready for: Its skinny and unaudited financials show a $48 million loss in 2024.

Here’s the pitch: A legacy newspaper leaning into IP (the Times turned a local crime story into the juicy Dirty John podcast and Bravo series); a turnkey content studio; and a gaming vertical combining live events with Wordle-style daily habits. The paper, which like other media outlets has turned rightward in the Trump era, might succeed in tapping into California conservatives; it has hired the same small bank that ran a similar fundraising for Newsmax in January. (Now, though, it will also have to contend with an LA-based Rupert Murdoch tabloid.)

— Liz Hoffman

Next moves for Outkick founder

One of Fox’s most prominent sports media personalities may be leaving the company to start a new media venture. Outkick founder Clay Travis’ contract is up at the end of the year, and he is weighing whether to leave the company he founded to start a new media venture, I’m told. Travis sold Outkick to Fox Corp. in 2021, and has since become a regular fixture on Fox News, discussing politics and sports through a conservative lens. But the commentator raised eyebrows internally earlier this month when he retweeted a post from swimmer Riley Gaines, an advocate of keeping trans women out of women’s sports, in which she criticized the Murdoch-owned New York Post for labeling her “anti-trans.” (The Post changed its headline to call her a “women’s rights defender.“) Semafor has since learned that Travis is also weighing whether to launch a new media company should he and Fox decide to part ways at the end of the year, though his discussions with the network have been amicable, a person familiar with them said.

Federal Reserve Governor Stephen Miran, NYSE President Lynn Martin, Walmart US CEO John Furner, Central Bank Governor of Kenya Dr. Kamau Thugge, Goldman Sachs President John Waldron, and more, will join the stage at the Fall Edition of Semafor’s World Economy Summit. Hosted in the Gallup Great Hall and spanning eight sessions over two days, the summit will feature on-the-record interviews on the state of global growth and finance, AI advancements, powering global energy needs, and the forces reshaping the world economy.

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• Max has made the cover of this week’s Harpers, which features a discussion of how the media lost trust. This is a rare postal scoop: The magazine’s cover isn’t online yet.
• Another news organization is rejecting the Pentagon’s new press policy. In recent weeks, the Department of Defense (or Department of War, depending on who you ask) announced that in order for news organizations to have physical access to parts of the Pentagon, they will have to agree not to publicly solicit information from sources. The New York Times has announced that it will not sign on to the policy. The Guardian also plans to announce that it will not agree to the policies: The new guidelines place “unacceptable restrictions on activities protected by the First Amendment,” a spokesperson told Semafor. Two Guardian reporters will likely be affected by the decision.
• The Amazon-produced documentary from Brett Ratner about Melania Trump has a release date.