Chris Licht faces an uphill battle at CNN. He got the CEO gig in the midst of a prickly merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery and right after the shocking exit of beloved long-time boss, Jeff Zucker. In his first six months, he’s shut down CNN+, ousted Brian Stelter, and shuffled anchors around, including Don Lemon and Jake Tapper. This week, the network chief held an internal town hall meeting where he faced a staff of thousands and discussed upcoming layoffs. Shortly afterwards, he sat down with Kara Swisher— who grilled him, of course.
The technology writer and commentator will leave The New York Times, where she was a columnist and podcast host, next month as she plans to launch a new podcast with Vox Media. The new series will serve as a companion show to Pivot, the podcast Swisher hosts with Scott Galloway for Vox’s New York magazine.
Conceding that the transition to video streaming has resulted in a scarcity of available program performance data, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos told interviewer Kara Swisher during Monday’s Code Conference in Beverly Hills that Netflix is going to make an effort to change things. “We’re trying to be more transparent with the market and talent and everybody,” Sarandos said. “It’s a big black box for everybody.”
Kara Swisher: Your Move, Facebook
Twitter will no longer allow political advertising, a move that places Twitter and Jack Dorsey in stark contrast to Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg.
Exclusives
Swisher returns to Recode Media with Peter Kafka to talk about how journalism and tech are doing in the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Recode boss Kara Swisher has this post-election remit for the profession: “We have to stop being quite as cooperative. We sort of suspend disbelief when these companies get money — this is just in tech, but it’s everything.”
Founders Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg move their staff and Rolodexes to a site backed by NBCU.
AllThingsD editors Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, who are leaving News Corp. at the end of the year, completed a deal with NBCUniversal for a news and conference business that will bring their current staff to a newly named website, according to people familiar with the matter.
Journalists are finding that sometimes it’s better to be the brand than to work for a brand. In the new economic landscape, many journalists have decided (or had the decision made for them) to leave their newspaper and news organization jobs and create their own branded presence on the Web. But the road to financial success can be long and filled with pitfalls, including the sticky ethics issue of being the editorial and advertising sides all rolled into one. Though some smart brand builders are finding the rewards to be great.
Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, co-editors of the All Things Digital news site, will leave at the end of the year. Mossberg has been the highly influential author of Personal Technology columns with The Wall Street Journal for two decades. He and Swisher collaborated as co-executive editors on All Things Digital, a separate website that covers technology and start-up news and also held conferences.
