#legacy-media

#legacy-media

The new CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss isn't Barry Goldwater, despite what you may have heard. Noted media critic George Clooney may not be able to tell her apart from Sean Hannity, but Weiss is essentially a 1990s New Republic liberal, someone who might once have edited the inflight magazine of Air Force One during a popular Democratic administration. Of course, even that is now too right-wing for most of the modern American left, including those found in the pages of today's New Republic.

Which raises a pressing question: Can online magazines survive when ads have plateaued and digital subscriptions still don't cover the cost of producing quality journalism? Maybe the answer is ... AI. Condé has content and data licensing deals with OpenAI, Perplexity and Amazon. But those deals could have steep half-lives, especially when a publisher's value is primarily tied to its library of content.

Legacy news media has long competed for audience with social media sites, video platforms, and streaming services. But a newer competitor - news creators - is pulling and retaining audiences in countries where mainstream media is struggling to keep them. A report published Tuesday by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) identified geographical and generational differences in how much attention is paid to news creators compared to traditional media outlets and journalists on social and video platforms.

Disney's stock is down 11% over the past five years while the S&P 500 has risen 91%, highlighting significant struggles for Disney shareholders, largely under Bob Iger's management.