Facebook scoop; Newsmax's new hire; Biden's op-ed on Yahoo; book excerpts depict Trump as delusional; Amazon's new vision for Christmas

View this email in your browser.

Share it on Facebook or Twitter.

Subscribe here.

Brian Stelter here at 9:50pm ET Monday with the latest on Facebook, Michael Wolff, Nintendo, HBO Max, "Sesame Street," Dwayne Johnson, Olivia Rodrigo, and more...

Bulletin!

You heard it here first: Facebook is rolling out its new newsletter product, called Bulletin, on Tuesday, according to sources involved with the initiative.

Bulletin is Facebook's version of Substack: A way to create and distribute both free and paid newsletters. FB has recruited dozens and dozens of writers, the sources said, across categories like sports, science, health, and finance.

According to Recode's Peter Kafka, who wrote about the plan earlier in the month, "Facebook is deliberately trying to avoid political (read: divisive and popular) writers and subjects on Bulletin." Substack already has more than enough of those.

The initial wave of Bulletin writers and their newsletters will be introduced on Tuesday. Participants are being paid to jump-start their newsletters with the expectation that they'll build up paying fan bases over time, in an elongated version of Substack's "Pro" program. Some writers have already been stockpiling columns and ideas for weeks. But they've largely been in the dark about the bigger-picture plan, and some told me they're looking forward to finding out who else is participating.

One appealing aspect, as Kafka wrote, is Facebook's "massive reach, with 2.85 billion users worldwide, and its ability to target and segment people who might be receptive to reading and paying for a newsletter that covers topics they're interested in."

>> Axios reporter Sara Fischer recently wrote that Bulletin is an example of Big Tech "racing to build and acquire new tools that will help them compete with smaller upstarts for the attention of individual creators..."

>> Twitter is also promoting its newsletter efforts, through the acquisition of Revue earlier this year and a deal with Eric Holthaus to provide a weather service...

>> Callum Jones writing for The Times of London: "Email is back and the social media giants are taking note..."

Facebook scores victory against FTC

Facebook won a key battle, but not the war, in federal court on Monday. A judge dismissed the FTC's antitrust complaint against FB by "saying the agency had failed to provide evidence for its claim that the social media giant holds a monopoly in social networking," Brian Fung reported for CNN Business.

But the judge, James Boasberg, also signaled that "the issues with the FTC's lawsuit could be addressed if the agency filed an amended complaint." The FTC said it is "determining" next steps. Lawmakers in both parties said antitrust reform is urgently needed.

>> "In a separate decision," Fung wrote, "Boasberg dismissed entirely a similar antitrust suit against Facebook brought by dozens of state governments, saying they waited too long to challenge Facebook's Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions, which were completed in 2012 and 2014, respectively..."

Facebook joins the $1 trillion club

In the immediate wake of Boasberg dismissing the FTC case, Facebook "joined the ranks of companies valued over a trillion dollars as of today's market close," The Verge's Mitchell Clark noted. This makes Facebook "the fifth U.S. company to surpass the feat, joining the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet," USA Today's Jessica Menton wrote...

>> Politico tech lobbying/influence reporter Emily Birnbaum tweeted: "So weird & wild that i have been covering the top tech companies in the world for years and have never once experienced the government actually punish, regulate or even significantly change the practices of any of them. Crazy how power works!"

TUESDAY PLANNER

SCOTUS will release opinions at 10am ET...

Donald Trump will be calling into Clay Travis and Buck Sexton's radio show...

The insanity trial for the Capital Gazette attacker will get underway...

New nonfiction releases include "The Cruelty is the Point" and "Nightmare Scenario..."

WarnerMedia (CNN's parent) launches HBO Max across Latin America and the Caribbean...

Hoping against hope

Updated death toll at the Champlain Towers condo collapse: 11. Number of missing: 150. One of Drudge's banner headlines: "BEACH BUILDING TURNS MASS GRAVE."

>> CNN's John Berman anchored "AC360" and co-anchored "New Day" from Surfside on Monday. "I am hoping for a miracle," Surfside mayor Charles Burkett said. "We could use one," Berman responded. "We could use many," Burkett said... (CNN)

>> "What's at the Surfside pop-up memorials? Flowers, candles, messages and whispers," Allie Pitchon writes... (Miami Herald)

>> "The collapse has been deeply personal for many journalists in the Miami area," CJR's Jon Allsop writes. "Two of the named victims, Gladys and Tony Lozano, were the godmother and uncle of Phil Ferro, the chief meteorologist at 7News..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART ONE

-- Coming up on Wednesday: "UNC's board of trustees is conducting a special meeting on Wed at 3pm. Nikole Hannah-Jones confirms it will vote on her proposed tenure there," per David Folkenflik... (Twitter)

-- Jennifer Rubin on the "brouhaha" over infrastructure infighting: "How did the media get all spun up over something that essentially turned out to be nothing?" (WaPo)

-- But Biden's blunder was newsworthy: He and his team "spent two days working to salvage the bipartisan infrastructure plan he had imperiled with a stray comment to reporters as he celebrated the announcement of the deal," Kevin Liptak and Kaitlan Collins report... (CNN)

Biden publishes infrastructure op-ed on Yahoo

Oliver Darcy writes: "Biden on Monday published an op-ed about the infrastructure deal over at Yahoo. In the op-ed, Biden outlined what the bill will do and reiterated that 'neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted in this agreement.' A White House official told me that the op-ed was placed on Yahoo because of the site's significant reach..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART TWO

-- On Monday author Michael Wolff shared two excerpts from his end-of-Trump book "Landslide." The first, in NYMag, is about Trump and January 6. The second, in The Times of London, is from his interview with 45. The book comes out July 27... (NYMag)

-- Correction: Last night I botched the title of Jon Karl's forthcoming book. The title is "Betrayal" and it comes out in November...

-- Marshall Cohen's newest must-read sums up the revelations from Wolff, Karl and Michael Bender: The book excerpts "revealed previously unknown efforts" by Trump to "abuse the powers of his office to overturn the 2020 election, deploy the military against racial justice protests and prosecute his political opponents..." (CNN)

-- "The excerpts also shed new light on Trump's increasingly unstable mindset in his final year," Cohen wrote. "They portrayed a president who was obsessed with self-serving conspiracy theories and surrounded by aides who knew he was delusional but were too afraid to tell him the truth..."

-- "The secrets and failures of Donald Trump's presidency are about to give the book publishing industry another jolt," Andy Meek writes... (Forbes)

Is there a market for this?

"The next book by former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is addressed to his fellow Republicans," the AP's Hillel Italie wrote Monday. The title is "Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden." The publisher, Simon & Schuster's Threshold imprint, says Christie calls out some GOPers for descending into "cowardice and madness" and challenges the "ultra-liberal policies of Joe Biden's Democrats." Is there much of a market for that lane? We'll see when the book comes out in November...

Newsmax adds Eric Bolling

"Eric Bolling, a former co-host for the popular Fox News roundtable show 'The Five' who was ousted following a report of inappropriate conduct toward former female colleagues, has joined the network's upstart competitor Newsmax," the LAT's Stephen Battaglio wrote Monday. "The Boca Raton, Fla.-based channel announced Monday that Bolling, 58, will start as a fill-in host immediately" and will get his own show in July. Newsmax is at the point where it doesn't have many open time slots anymore, so when it adds a prominent host, that means someone else is losing airtime...

YouTube reinstates Right Wing Watch

Oliver Darcy writes: "YouTube on Monday said it had reinstated Right Wing Watch's account following a review after the company 'mistakenly suspended' it. As The Daily Beast's Justin Baragona and Adam Rawnsley reported, YouTube 'also suggested that the issue was a mistake due to high volume of content and that they attempted to move quickly to undo the ban.' Earlier in the day, the ban generated backlash, with some critics joking that YouTube was better removing an account aimed at exposing misinfo than the accounts which actually spread it. What is a bit bizarre is that while YouTube now says the account was 'mistakenly' suspended, Right Wing Watch had previously said that the company affirmed the ban when it appealed. Something doesn't quite add up.."

FOR THE RECORD, PART THREE

-- Max Boot writes about Tucker Carlson's attacks on the military: "Thanks to Trump, the guardrails are gone. These right-wing blowhards — most of whom have never served a day in uniform — now feel free to revile decorated combat veterans such as Milley..." (WaPo)

-- Meanwhile: "USAA is facing calls to withdraw its advertising from Fox News..." (Express News)

-- "Sen. Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of government surveillance programs, proposed legislation Monday designed to protect journalists' data from government subpoenas in the wake of recent admissions by the DOJ..." (WaPo)

-- Nathan Maung, editor in chief of news website Kamayut, who was detained for three months in Myanmar, "says he was tortured and feared he would die in an interrogation cell," Michael E. Miller reports... (WaPo)

DOJ charges 1/6 rioter who filmed assault of NYT photojournalist

CNN's Hannah Rabinowitz and Marshall Cohen report: "Federal prosecutors on Monday charged a woman who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 and filmed the harrowing mob attack against a NYT photojournalist. Sandy Weyer of Pennsylvania allegedly ran to the top of a staircase inside the Capitol and videotaped the assault. The victim, photographer Erin Schaff, was beaten and robbed of her camera after a group of men accosted her, demanded to know who she worked for, and ripped away her credentials. Weyer isn't accused of attacking the photographer, and nobody has been charged with that assault as of Monday." But this is another sign that the DOJ is taking the mob's attacks against members of the media seriously...

FOR THE RECORD, PART FOUR

By Kerry Flynn:

-- Staffers at Insider have voted to unionize by a vote of 241-14. The unit, which went public in April, represents more than 300 editorial employees... (Twitter)

-- Sara Guaglione checked in on newsrooms' Summer Friday policies. Staffers at BuzzFeed and Vox don't get them, but the companies have encouraged more flexible work schedules and time off... (Digiday)

-- Hanaa' Tameez reports how publishers are continuing to hold virtual events even as in-person ones return... (Nieman Lab)

-- "Newsrooms often don't tell job and internship applicants that they didn't get the gig. Is that wrong?" Jaden Elison asks... (Poynter)

"Five Predictions About the Future of Conservative Talk Radio"

Lots of smart stuff here from Brian Rosenwald, writing for Michael Smerconish's website. His first prediction: Buck Sexton and Clay Travis "won't come close to matching" Rush Limbaugh's stardom. In a nutshell: Too political, not entertaining enough. Per Rosenwald, here's why "Limbaugh's audience is almost certain to break up, getting spread among a number of hosts..."

Three future-of-audio items

-- New insights from Rich Greenfield: "Spotify is trying to identify at least one must-have podcast across each demographic/genre to force them into Spotify for podcast listening. High profile exclusive podcast content is finally starting to make Spotify feel more like Netflix..." (Lightshed)

-- Jay-Z and Jack Dorsey are talking "very vaguely" about "future plans for their Tidal streaming service..." (Variety)

-- "The NHL and social audio app Clubhouse are partnering to bring fans closer to the 2021 Stanley Cup Final." (But how many people are listening?) (SportTechie)

FOR THE RECORD, PART FIVE

-- Harmeet Kaur writes: "Sesame Street" is helping Asian American children grapple with bullying via a new song called "Proud of Your Eyes..." (CNN)

-- "Country music is exactly where it was last summer, when the dam on the industry's ocean of racism supposedly broke." Read Andrea Williams' full story here... (Vulture)

-- ViacomCBS is moving the CMT Music Awards to CBS as the broadcast network "is still in talks for a new ACM Awards deal..." (TheWrap)

'A whole new universe' for Amazon?

Dwayne Johnson and Jeff Bezos both shared this photo on Instagram Sunday night, which made me wonder what was in the works. "Exciting week coming up," Johnson wrote, with a "big announcement to deliver fun to families around the world."

THR's Borys Kit had the news on Monday: Johnson's Seven Bucks Productions has "set up Red One, a unique Christmas-themed feature project that seems to offer the possibility of branding and business opportunities not just for the streaming side of Amazon but the e-commerce side as well."

Amazon says "Red One" -- set for a holiday 2023 launch -- is a "globe-trotting, four-quadrant action-adventure comedy, imagining a whole new universe to explore within the holiday genre," and the concept "could encompass not only a tentpole film, but could reach beyond entertainment across multiple industries and businesses." So in other words, former THR editor Matthew Belloni wrote, Amazon is "now making movies explicitly to juice holiday shopping..."

FOR THE RECORD, PART SIX

-- "Former NBCUniversal vice chair Ron Meyer is in talks with the Qatari government for a role bringing more film investment," the aforementioned Matthew Belloni reported in the latest edition of his invite-only newsletter. And that was just the start of his Meyer info... (What I'm Hearing)

-- John Oliver investigated healthcare sharing ministries on Sunday's "Last Week Tonight." As a bit, Oliver set up his own fake ministry called "JohnnyCare..." (CNN)

-- "For all the talk of 'Fortnite' and its so-called metaverse of character crossovers, Nintendo has created the industry's biggest team of rivals" via "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate..." (Axios)

-- YouTube has won the "naming rights for a 6,000-seat event venue at Hollywood Park..." (The Verge)

RIP John Langley, whose 'Cops' cast a long shadow

Brian Lowry writes: "John Langley, who co-created "Cops" with Malcolm Barbour in the 1980s, died over the weekend at the age of 78. Back in 2013, when he received an honor at the NATPE convention, I interviewed him about the long and significant legacy of the program, for which he was a forceful advocate – Langley spoke in an almost professorial manner – despite the show's more controversial aspects regarding the image of policing. Langley rightly argued that the show fundamentally impacted the economics of network TV – demonstrating that you could generate high ratings at a minimal cost, relative to scripted fare – while proving that people would sign waivers to be on TV even in an unflattering light. 'The network thought it was a legal nightmare,' he told me. The timing of the show also gave the networks and studios leverage in contract negotiations with the Writers Guild, which would become a recurring issue in the decades that followed. 'It was fortuitous timing for us reality people, and not so much for writers and actors,' Langley said."

FOR THE RECORD, PART SEVEN

By Lisa Respers France:

-- Cardi B debuted her baby bump on the BET Awards...

-- Speaking of the awards show, Lil Nas X clapped back after criticism for passionately kissing one of his male backup dancers during his performance...

-- Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but Courtney Love doesn't sound happy with Olivia Rodrigo...

Olivia Rodrigo back at No. 1

"Three weeks ago," the NYT's Ben Sisario writes, "a vinyl bonanza from Taylor Swift blocked Olivia Rodrigo from enjoying a second run at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, but now the teenage newcomer is back on top. 'Sour,' the debut album by Rodrigo, the 18-year-old pop phenomenon and Disney actress, returns to No. 1 with the equivalent of 105,000 sales in the US, according to MRC Data, Billboard's tracking arm." Read on...

SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST...

Pet of the day

Readers Skip Horne and Andy Ceperley email: "After finishing today's edition of Reliable Sources from her desert home in Palm Springs, Miss Dolly Kensington decides that it is time for cocktails..."