SCOOP Pt. 2 Puck:

Ben Sherwood and Joanna Coles will buy 49% stake of The Daily Beast, I’m told…

Barry Diller will retain majority 51% stake…

Sherwood & Coles giving interview to The New York Times this weekend ahead of formal announcement

The reason? A source said Musk “wants people to sound smarter,” and he thinks Grok could help with that. So, AI-generated tweets could be coming to our timelines soon, en masse! fortune.com/2024/04/12/elo…

Bit of a Friday scoop… Elon Musk wants to make Grok AI an option for X premium users to compose tweets. Musk told engineers do it a few months ago, and according to a source, the team is stalling. fortune.com/2024/04/12/elo…

The Intercept is set to announce a new interim EIC, former LA Times assistant managing editor Ben Muessig.

well....it was not an april fools...it's happening ‼️ we're asking YOU to vote on a name for D.C.'s new worker-led news outlet ‼️ there's an option to leave open-ended feedback as well; we're all ears!
forms.gle/3HKxFPFv67CYZp…

The harassment he’s describing is a polite voicemail.

Another blistering shareholder letter opposing $PARA deal with Skydance: “Be assured that this will be the only courtesy provided to you before the initiation of litigation.”

More cuts at the WSJ today. I'm told a substantial chunk of paper's video/YouTube team was laid off.

Exclusive: Three Paramount Directors to Step Down as Company Discusses Skydance Merger $PARA wsj.com/business/media…

“Run by the husband-and-wife team of Tom Clare and Libby Locke, the firm had helped popularize efforts by wealthy and powerful clients to attack news organizations and delegitimize or kill unfavorable articles.”
ift.tt/SzIC9Xu

CBS News Bringing Misinformation Unit to TV With Hiring of EP Melissa Mahtani (Exclusive) hollywoodreporter.com/business/busin…

Endorse.

All I’ll say about the Bookforum thing is that calling someone Renata Adler while doing a Perils of Pauline on them is pretty funny.

The new Grok AI summaries of 'what everyone's talking about' are hilarious

If anyone knows how to sell publishers a questionable deal… axios.com/2024/04/09/cam…

You can always recognize a Josh T*polsky site. sherwood.news

Exclusive: Ex-Meta news executive Campbell Brown joins AI startup TollBit
Axios axios.com/2024/04/09/cam…

Last Wednesday, I went to the launch of “Praxis Magazine” (yes, from the company/aspiring crypto nation known for its young founders + far right politics)

Extremely weird event. I also read the magazine, and did not like it. For Hell Gate *subscribe today!*:
hellgatenyc.com/praxis-magazin…

Need to write a murder mystery set here.