Hunter Biden's confessions; Amazon's 'bellicosity;' Tribune's new alternative; '60 Minutes' backlash; CNN in Myanmar; movie theater stocks are roaring

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Brian Stelter here at 9pm ET Monday, hitting send before Baylor v. Gonzaga. (I'm rooting for Gonzaga to salvage my bracket.) Scroll down for the latest on Tribune, "60 Minutes," Greg Gutfeld, "Hemingway," Lil Nas X, and more...

Ugly truths in "Beautiful Things"

When Joe Biden was vice president, and was mourning the death of his older son Beau, he was also trying to keep his younger son Hunter alive.

That's one of the many takeaways from Hunter's book "Beautiful Things," which comes out on Tuesday.

Many people have already made up their minds about Hunter, and others aren't interested in knowing anything more, but I think his first-hand account of drug addiction, tabloid culture and political craziness is incredibly informative. It's one of those "you think you know, but you have no idea" types of stories. For example, Hunter's big paychecks for sitting on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma? He reveals that "Burisma turned into a major enabler" of his "steepest skid into addiction" by providing cash for all the crack cocaine.

This is not the way we're used to reading about a child of the president. Hunter's accounts of drunken benders and cracked-fueled odysseys are downright scary. And his recollections of his brother – "wish you could've known Beau" – are sorrowful.

So far most of the book reviews have been quite positive. Publishers Weekly says his "courageous self-assessment makes the despair of substance abuse devastatingly palpable." Book Marks has other reviews here. Like EW's Seija Rankin, I was struck by the scenes that involved his dad: "The result is, purposeful or not, a portrait of our current President as the ultimate Patriarch."

It's also a portrayal of addiction as "really the great equalizer in this country," as CNN's Kate Bennett told me after we both read the book. "It's the one thing that really brought President Biden to his knees." Read Bennett's assessment here...

"Where's Hunter?"

Chapter after chapter puts the "Where's Hunter?" heckling into an entirely new context. Some of the book's boosters, like Stephen King, have appropriated it to promote "Beautiful Things." King wrote: "Where's Hunter? The answer is he's in this book, the good, the bad, and the beautiful."

But the scrutiny of what pro-Trump media shouters sometimes call the "Biden crime family" continues to this day, and Hunter acknowledges it in the book. Regarding his Burisma role, which was at the heart of President Trump's first impeachment, he writes, "I did nothing unethical, and have never been charged with wrongdoing. In our current political environment, I don't believe it would make any difference if I took that seat or not. I'd be attacked anyway. What I do believe, in this current climate, is that it wouldn't matter what I did or didn't do. The attacks weren't intended for me. They were meant to wound my dad." Still, he says, in retrospect, for optics reasons, he wouldn't take the board seat again.

Here's where Hunter is

Hunter appeared on "CBS Sunday Morning," then Monday's "CBS This Morning" and NPR's "Morning Edition." He also taped an in-depth interview for Marc Maron's podcast. Maron said in his intro that he viewed Hunter as "a whipping boy by the right wing press" and wasn't very interested in talking to him. But then he read the book and wondered about what it's like to be caricatured and demonized: "How does a human, let alone a drug addict trying to stay clean, deal with that?" Here's the resulting convo...

>> Later this week Hunter will be on the BBC and on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," but he seems to be avoiding more overtly political and partisan spaces. Fox talks about him practically every hour, but there's no word of a Hunter book interview on Fox, nor do I think there will be...

>> After the CBS interviews, "Beautiful Things" broke into the top 10 on Amazon's best sellers list...

Shining a light

Hunter told NPR's Scott Simon that "truly the reason I wrote the book" is that "it'll give hopefully some people hope. Give them some hope that they don't have to remain locked in that prison. And I don't just mean the people that are stuck at the bottom of the well like I was, but the people that stand at the top of that well and realize unless we go down with the lantern, he's never going to find his way out. But that's a dark and dangerous journey for them. And it was for my family. But their light was never not seeking me out. Never a moment, never a moment that they weren't trying to save me."

>> John Avlon said on CNN Sunday night that the memoir "not only humanizes Hunter," but "I think it puts a point on Joe Biden's refusal during the campaign to distance himself from his only surviving son..."

Biden to visit a vaccination site

On Tuesday afternoon POTUS will visit a vaccination site in Virginia, then deliver remarks on "the state of vaccinations" around 3:45pm ET. There's been some major progress for Biden to tout, including the first day of 4 million reported doses and the expansion of vaccine eligibility in more states...

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- CNN.com's lead headline right now: "Democrats get new tool to bypass filibuster" (CNN)

-- "Bristol Health is teaming up with ESPN to hold a new drive-thru COVID-19 vaccine clinic" at the network's North Campus. It opened on Monday... (NBC CT)

-- Speaking of ESPN, the network's audience for the Women's NCAA basketball championship was "on par with recent years..." (SBJ)

-- The Supreme Court handed Google a "landmark win" on Monday, but it doubled as a "huge concern" for Hollywood, Eriq Gardner reports... (THR)

-- Separately, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested "that Congress should consider whether laws should be updated to better regulate social media platforms that, he said, have come to have 'unbridled control' over 'unprecedented' amounts of speech," Ariane de Vogue writes... (CNN)

Caption contest

Here's the Easter Bunny, played by WH director of message planning Meghan Hays, interrupting Jen Psaki's press briefing on Monday. CNN's Kaitlan Collins kept up her questioning despite the surprise guest...

"60 Minutes" faces backlash

Oliver Darcy writes: "'60 Minutes' is facing backlash for a story it aired on Ron DeSantis — including from Publix and two prominent Democrats in the state. As part of a larger story about Florida's vaccine rollout, the program spotlighted a $100,000 donation that Publix made to DeSantis' re-election bid. The story, by correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi, suggested there was a possible link between the donation and the state's partnership with Publix for vaccine distribution. But, beyond spotlighting public finance records, '60 Minutes' didn't offer any substantive evidence to support the serious assertion of possible foul play. More in my story here..."

>> Darcy adds: "After the report aired, Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat, said the suggestion of foul play was 'absolute malarkey.' And Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner, also a Democrat, accused '60 Minutes' of publishing 'intentionally false' info. Publix additionally issued a statement saying the 'irresponsible suggestion' was 'absolutely false and offensive.' A spox for '60 Minutes' defended the segment to me, noting it had asked DeSantis for an interview twice, but that he declined..."

"Huddle" up

CNN's Brooke Baldwin is launching her book "Huddle" on Tuesday. Subtitled "How Women Unlock Their Collective Power," she says the book is "part journalism, part memoir," examining the way women "team up to give one another the support, strength and inspiration they need to meet the challenges of daily life -- and to change the world." Baldwin will be holding a virtual event with Dana Bash "at" Politics & Prose on Tuesday... and on Wednesday she'll be on "CBS This Morning" with fellow huddler Gayle King... Get the full list of events and other book info here.

Media week ahead calendar

Another Tuesday book release: Glenn Greenwald is out with "Securing Democracy: My Fight for Press Freedom and Justice in Bolsonaro's Brazil..."

Wednesday: The WH says Biden will "deliver remarks on the historic investments in the American Jobs Plan..."

Friday: Taylor Swift's new version of "Fearless" is released...

(Add items to our calendar by emailing us anytime!)

Week two of the Chauvin trial

The big takeaway after Monday's testimony in the Derek Chauvin trial, via CNN's Omar Jimenez: "We've now had multiple senior level officers from within the Minneapolis PD testify in one way or another that Derek Chauvin's actions do not line up with what they believe should have happened. That now includes the Chief of Police." Details...

>> France24 reporter Kethevane Gorjestani joined me on Sunday with insights about global coverage of the trial. She said the case resonates partly because many countries "have their own George Floyds in the past..."

>> Per CNN's Aaron Cooper, "George Floyd's friend who was in the car with him on May 25 when they were confronted by police will appear in front of Judge Peter Cahill Tuesday morning to determine if he will testify..."

"Q" revealed?

"The final episode of HBO's 'Q: Into the Storm' on Sunday drew a pretty clear conclusion about 'Q's' identity, after extended parrying with filmmaker Cullen Hoback. As Hoback spoke with Watkins, Watkins appeared to slip up and admit he had been anonymously posting as Q. "It was basically three years of intelligence training, teaching normies how to do intelligence work. It was basically what I was doing anonymously before," Watkins told Hoback. Watkins quickly denied he had been posting as Q, but if you watch the clip, the body language and laughter appear to give it all away. WaPo's Drew Harwell and Craig Timberg have a summary here...

>> Brian Lowry writes: "Adam McKay, who served as exec producer of the project, tweeted that he hoped news organizations would draw a lesson from Hoback's painstaking three-year investigation, saying, 'The only way it happened was because Cullen paid for this docu series himself. 3 years. I hope way more news outlets remember the best stories come from this kind of deep dive journalism.' The main problem, frankly, as I felt in my original review, is that the people who most need to see it -- to have the curtain pulled back -- almost surely won't be inclined to watch..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- Here's the full Kara Swisher interview with Tim Cook that we previewed on Friday... (NYT)

-- "Tipping has arrived in Clubhouse," Alex Heath reports, "but Clubhouse itself isn't making money, at least initially, by enabling payments between its users..." (Info)

-- Get caught up on Amazon, the Alabama union vote, and the company's "confrontational approach to PR" via Sara Ashley O'Brien here. "Some industry watchers see in Amazon's recent PR posture proof that the technology giant may be feeling newly vulnerable..." (CNN Business)

-- HuffPost went deep on Jay Carney, "Biden's former spokesman," who's "now battling unions as Amazon's top PR guy..." (HuffPost)

-- For subscribers of The Information, Nick Wingfield went long on why Amazon's "recent bellicosity" is risky for Jeff Bezos and co... (Info)

-- "The San Francisco Examiner has named Google's Carly Schwartz as the 156-year-old publication's next editor in chief..." (Examiner)

Newslight = Tribune's alternative to Alden

Kerry Flynn writes: "Newslight could be the savior Tribune newsrooms have been hoping for. That's the official name of new entity joined owned by Stewart Bainum and Hansjörg Wyss. Tribune Publishing revealed Monday that Newslight's offer to acquire the company $18.50 per share 'would reasonably be expected to lead to a 'Superior Proposal,'' confirming WSJ's Sunday scoop.

That means Alden may need to up its bid. Or, they could back down. As Joshua Benton wrote, 'If Bainum and Wyss are successful, Alden's shares will have increased in value 45 percent in less than a year and a half. That's not a bad return in the newspaper business these days.' Read his Nieman Lab piece for more on the possible scenarios..."

>> The framing of WaPo's brand new story: "The battle for Tribune..."

"In a Penn. town, a Facebook group fills the local news void"

Kerry Flynn writes: "That's the headline to Brandy Zadrozny's latest. Come for the perfectly executed graphic of a newsstand covered with Facebook reactions. Stay for a deeply reported story on the consequences of local news deserts. Zadrozny writes, '[T]he kind of misinformation that's traded in The News Alerts of Beaver County and thousands of other groups just like it poses a unique danger. It's subtler and in some ways more insidious, because it's more likely to be trusted.' Read on..."

--> BTW, Zadrozny and Ben Collins have both been promoted to Senior Reporters for NBC's Business, Tech & Media team...

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- "CNN has added Alex MacCallum to its digital leadership as the new head of product and general manager of CNN's direct-to-consumer business..." (TVNewser)

-- Veteran foreign correspondent Bill Neely is retiring after 40+ years... (NBC)

-- The NYT's Frank Bruni is stepping down as a columnist and taking a position at Duke. He will continue to write his newsletter and contribute to Opinion... (The Hill)

-- Jim Dao is the NYT's new Metro editor... (NYT)

-- Anthony Scaramucci, who was with Fox Business before Trump, has joined CNBC as a contributor... (TheWrap)

-- "Zola Mashariki, former senior exec at Fox Searchlight and BET, is the new head of Audible Studios..." (Variety)

CNN in Myanmar

This is a must-watch: CNN's Clarissa Ward is in Myanmar as the military crackdown intensifies. She appeared live on "New Day" and "The Lead" on Monday. CNN is in the country with the permission of the military, and is being escorted by the military, as Ward explained in her live shots...

Big reads from the weekend...

-- Shane Goldmacher's reporting won the weekend: "How Trump Steered Supporters Into Unwitting Donations..." (NYT)

-- Jason Gay on Gonzaga's unforgettable shot on Saturday night... (WSJ)

-- Michael Paulson on Saturday's experiment at the St. James Theater: "Three hundred and eighty-seven days after Broadway went dark, a faint light started to glimmer..." (NYT)

-- Jennifer Levitz on vaccination sites that feel "less like waiting in line for airport security and more like waiting for a Disney ride..." (WSJ)

-- Maria Morava and Jay Croft on Jerry Seinfeld's surprise appearance at a newly reopened NYC comedy club. "It felt like getting electrocuted in a good way," Seinfeld said..." (CNN)

-- On a darker note, Sarah Lyall on "late-stage pandemic burnout." The title: "We Have All Hit A Wall..." (NYT)

-- The NYT "attempted to capture a sense of the rising tide of anti-Asian bias nationwide" by compiling "media reports from across the country," with "more than 110 episodes since March 2020 in which there was clear evidence of race-based hate..." (NYT)

-- Drew Harwell and Craig Timberg on how the Capitol rioters got caught: "License plate readers, facial recognition and a web of surveillance that watches us all..." (WaPo)

-- Karen Tumulty's Opinion piece: "The shameless revisionism of the Capitol attack cannot be allowed to take root..." (WaPo)

-- And if you were at Easter services or savoring the spring weather on Sunday, catch up on the "Reliable Sources" telecast here... (CNN)

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

-- Tucker Carlson's interview with Piers Morgan is out... (Mediaite)

-- With Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch now in Sydney, Australia, "the questions of who is in charge and what the future holds are particularly hazy," Ben Smith writes in this profile of Viet Dinh, "the lawyer behind the throne..." (NYT)

-- Sarah Ellison reexamined the Alexi McCammond and Teen Vogue mess, concluding that it's "really a Condé Nast mess," and noting that "the search for the next editor in chief is ongoing..." (WaPo)

Phylicia Rashād on the new film "20 Pearls"

Lisa Respers France writes: "I talked with the legendary actress Phylicia Rashād about narrating '20 Pearls,' a new documentary about the first Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, which boasts among its membership both Rashād and VP Kamala Harris, who is in the film. Rashād said that one of the things she loves about the documentary is that is focuses on the sorority being at the forefront of so much in history, including a healthcare initiative they started in Mississippi during the Great Depression that went on to help vaccinate Black people who were suffering under Jim Crow laws. 'We will persist in delivering the good,' she said..."

"Hemingway" premieres on PBS

Brian Lowry writes: "Although some documentary filmmakers have complained about the amount of resources that PBS devotes to Ken Burns, it's hard to argue that the veteran director doesn't deliver qualitatively. Burns' latest collaboration with Lynn Novick, 'Hemingway,' takes a six-hour plunge into the author's work as well as his tumultuous and colorful life, with all its contradictions and complexity. Jeff Daniels provides the author's voice, reading from his private letters and published materials."

The project was released on Monday. Read more from Lowry here...

"People seem ready..."

Here's how Variety framed the big question of the weekend: "Will 'Godzilla vs. Kong' Kick Off a Post-COVID Renaissance for Movie Theaters?"

There are some reasons to feel cautiously optimistic. As Frank Pallotta wrote, the Warner Bros.' monster mash "brought in the biggest opening weekend of the pandemic era so far." Mary Parent, vice chairman at Legendary Entertainment, told Brooks Barnes that "people seem ready for emotional release, to experience that human connectivity — laughing together, getting scared together — and complete transportation that only movie theaters can provide."

Movie theater stocks are roaring

Shares of AMC Entertainment closed up 13% on Monday. And "Cinemark, Marcus and giant screen exhibitor IMAX also each rose between 3% and 6% while the UK-listed shares of Cineworld, the London-based owner of Regal Cinemas, were up 4%," Paul R. La Monica wrote...

>> Analysis by Bloomberg's Lucas Shaw: "Godzilla vs. Kong is proof people still want to go to the movie theater (never in doubt), and also a very effective way of driving subscribers for HBO Max. It's what they call a win-win. The big question is, now that the movie window is going back to 45 days, whether it will a) cannibalize box office sales at all or b) still be a good way to drive HBO Max subscriptions. This weekend didn't answer that."

Fox News Channel's 11pm ET comedy hour

Fox is replacing its 11pm ET show, which it bills as a newscast, with a "subversive" comedy hour by Greg Gutfeld, and it starts on Monday night. Variety's Brian Steinberg says "Fox News executives want people to compare Gutfeld to the late-night options already standing in his new hour," from Trevor Noah on Comedy Central to Stephen Colbert on CBS. But those comparisons don't entirely hold up since "Gutfeld!" will be airing at 8pm ET on the West Coast, and it won't re-air later. As Steinberg wrote, "Gutfeld will also square off with more traditional 11pm rivals, like CNN's Don Lemon and MSNBC's Brian Williams — and may be judged more seriously on how his show performs against them."

>> Here is Fox's framing, via EVP Meade Cooper, in an email to Steinberg: "It makes sense for us to enter this space to give late night viewers who feel underrepresented a place they can laugh at night without feeling they are getting laughed at."

>> The previous 11pm show, Shannon Bream's "Fox News @ Night," will move to midnight ET, where it'll be the only cable newscast routinely live at that hour...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- Lil Nas X's "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" launched at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart on Monday, "propelled by its buzzy official video..." (Billboard)

-- Hundreds of family, friends, and fans attended a Monday prayer vigil for DMX "at the hospital where he's still fighting for his life..." (TMZ)

-- Aaron Rodgers began his two-week period hosting "Jeopardy!" on Monday. I'll be on CNN's "New Day" talking about the future of the game show in the 7am ET hour on Tuesday... (SI)

-- Lisa Respers France writes: "Rita Wilson has shared why she and husband Tom Hanks haven't been vaccinated yet..." (CNN)

SAG Award winners

The roughly 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild "honored the late Chadwick Boseman, Viola Davis, Yuh-Jung Youn, Daniel Kaluuya and the cast of 'The Trial of the Chicago 7' in film" during Sunday night's awards telecast, Sandra Gonzalez reports. "In television, 'Schitt's Creek' and 'The Crown' continued their award success."

Chloe Melas wrote more about the posthumous recognition for Boseman here. Boseman's wife, Taylor Simone Ledward, accepted the award on his behalf with a moving speech...

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST...

Puppy of the day

R. L. Stine, "Goosebumps" author and inspiration to yours truly, wrote in with an "announcement:" He says "his new puppy, arriving this week, will not be named Slappy, after the evil dummy. He will, in fact, be named Lucky, which he is."