Student journalists at The Cornell Daily Sun did what far bigger newsrooms wouldn't. They stayed on the Cornell 7 story for two years, named the seven accused men, protected the woman who came forward, and refused to soften the details. Michelle Kinney, Julie Roginsky, and Jeff Jarvis open Breaking the News by honoring Cereese Qusba and Sophia Dasser, the two young women who broke the story, and by talking about the failures of Title IX, New York's lack of an NDA ban, and the institutions built to look away.
From there, the three turn to the media landscape those students are walking into. The Ellisons are about to take over CNN, Mark Thompson is staying on, and the open question is what comes next: layoffs, a heavy debt load, Trump's leverage over broadcast licenses, and an audience that has already moved on. Along the way, they get into why trending on Twitter was always a myth, what Condé Nast's latest move says about print, the wave of tech oligarch films from Aaron Sorkin and Alex Gibney, a Paramount documentary deal the panel reads as a possible catch and kill, how NDAs sank Julie's own documentary at the streamers, and why Somebody Feed Phil moving to YouTube may signal where independent work is headed.
This episode was pre-recorded, so news may have moved since taping.
Part of The Mayday Network, an independent, women-led independent media where politics meets culture.
0:00 Cold open
1:10 Welcome
1:49 The Cornell Daily Sun students who broke the Cornell 7 story
3:34 Jeff on fearless student journalism
7:04 Julie on Title IX failures and the cover-up culture
9:40 Hochul, NDAs, and the special prosecutor
11:15 Michelle on storytelling and the Cornell Sun's independence
12:44 Cornell Student Journalists Qusba and Dasser on CNN
15:58 The Ellisons, CNN, and Mark Thompson
24:30 Who still watches cable news?
28:12 Jeff's book plug and the myth of mass media
31:38 Condé Nast, Vogue, and Sex and the City -- Dinosaurs of the Past
35:00 The tech oligarch films
36:30 Paramount's Lindsey Graham documentary
37:30 How NDAs (About NDAs!) killed Julie's documentary
41:37 Distribution, open source, and the future of independent media
45:42 Somebody Feed Phil goes to YouTube, and award season campaigns
50:18 Women's basketball and Jack Smith, signoff
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