Confider #93: The Don Lemon Comeback Begins

EXCLUSIVE — LEMON’S ‘X’-RATED COMEBACK: Former CNN star Don Lemon may return to your screen very soon—albeit not the cable-news ones he’s used to. The famously outspoken news anchor is attempting to mount a comeback, Confider has learned, and is in talks to host a program on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Lemon confirmed the news on Tuesday afternoon. Read the full Confider scoop here.

EXCLUSIVE — DON’T SHOOT THE MESSENGER: While The Messenger faces an existential crisis, the “nonpartisan” news site’s staffers finally got a chance to hear firsthand from management. Last week’s series of hastily arranged Zoom sit-downs—which were announced on The Messenger’s Slack last Wednesday by PR chief Kimberly Bernhardt amid employee outrage over reports that the company’s board weighed killing the site—featured owner Jimmy Finkelstein and Editor-in-Chief Dan Wakeford directly discussing concerns. For many of the outlet’s staffers, who’ve long demanded Wakeford hold a town hall, this was the first time they’d ever engaged with the boss. Two staffers told Confider they were unaware of Wakeford’s British accent until they finally heard him speak during last week’s meetings. However, according to one insider with knowledge of the matter, a key reason Wakeford hadn’t spoken to the rank-and-file in recent months is that Finkelstein barred him from communicating directly with staff outside his daily editorial meetings with top deputies. “Dan is deeply involved at all levels in helping build this hugely successful brand and has always been available to his team 24/7,” a Messenger spokesperson wrote to Confider. “He is creating a regular communications program with the editorial team.”

During last week’s chats, as first reported by Semafor, Finkelstein attempted to blame The Daily Beast and other outlets for his site’s financial woes, claiming he had potential investors lined up until media reporters damaged his fundraising and reputation, causing at least one advertiser to try to pull out. Finkelstein also admitted that he must quickly raise money over the next few weeks, otherwise the site could go out of business, confirming Confider’s reporting that The Messenger was on “life support.” Since then, we’ve learned, several C-suite execs have exited: Chief Activation Officer Dana Miller and Chief Brand Officer Mark Ingall were furloughed, while Head of Entertainment Mary Margaret is gone. “We don't comment on personnel,” the spokesperson wrote.

Meanwhile, Messenger board meetings earlier this month got a bit contentious. Three people familiar with the situation told Confider that members of the board directly expressed concerns to Finkelstein about the precarious situation. It was during this meeting that the board considered shutting down The Messenger entirely after they learned that the company only had enough money to survive through the end of January. Since then, Finkelstein has sought to raise tens of millions of dollars to keep the site alive. Axios reported last week that a group of conservative media operatives are interested in buying a majority stake of the company for $30 million. [Editor’s note: This story has been updated to say that board members “directly expressed concerns” to Finkelstein about The Messenger’s precarious situation and to remove a quote from a single source who characterized the board members as lashing out at Finkelstein.]

Much of the finger-pointing internally, however, has been aimed at departing president Richard Beckman, aka the “Mad Dog.” After Finkelstein raised $50 million to launch The Messenger last year, Beckman immediately tossed out pie-in-the-sky promises of massive site traffic and $100 million in annual revenue, based solely on digital advertising and branded events. The company quickly hired 150 journalists and vowed to beef up staff to 550, all while Beckman took out expensive office leases across the country and oversaw the spending of $100,000 to stock up the offices with snacks, Confider has learned. Thanks to his overzealous spending, which insiders said harkened back to his hard-charging tenure at Condé Nast, Beckman soon began clashing with other Messenger executives, who ended up leaving months after the site’s launch. Beckman himself began telling employees this past fall that the company was “out of money,” prompting fed-up journos to demand a town hall. The business model, which relied disproportionately on low-paying programmatic digital ads, ended up generating only $3 million in revenue last year—a far cry from Beckman’s nine-digit pledge.

With the ship seemingly going down, Beckman announced last week his resignation as president at the end of the month, citing health concerns. And in a final thumb in the newsroom’s eye, Beckman posted his resignation letter to LinkedIn before ever telling employees. In the end, as one current staffer described it to Confider, The Messenger may turn out more like Quibi than its original promise of being a “WaPo-Daily Mail hybrid.”

IN PLAIN SIGHT: ABC News boss Kim Godwin has only a few months left on her current contract with the network, but so far no news on whether there’ve been any negotiations to re-up her. Nevertheless, Godwin seems optimistic, if her Instagram is any measure. “For 2024, I like the word horizon,” she recently posted. “That place where earth symbolically meets the sky. Where your potential has no boundaries. Expansive. Limitless. Where brighter days are formed and always exist. Where dreams develop and are nurtured. Captivating. Exhilarating. Motivating. Where God gives you hope and a future.”... NBC News reporter Miguel Almaguer, who was suspended by the network in 2022 after his retracted story on Paul Pelosi inflamed right-wing conspiracy theories, is leaving the channel after 18 years on the job… CNN announced a pair of promotions on Monday, naming Kyung Lah as senior investigative correspondent and Ryan Young as a senior national correspondent.

Tips? We’re all ears: confider@thedailybeast.com or call/text us 551 655 2343.

MORE FROM THE BEAST MEDIA DESK

— Weeks after his Sunday night show was shockingly canceled by MSNBC after three years, sparking backlash among progressives, Mehdi Hasan announced at the end of his final broadcast this weekend that he was leaving the network entirely. “As I say, new year, new plans,” Hasan declared as he signed off. Read more here.

—Sean Hannity is moving full-time from New York to “the free state of Florida,” the Fox News star announced. Thanks to Florida’s decidedly Republican bent and lack of income tax, Hannity will cease filming from the comforts of his Long Island mansion and apparently move the operation to Florida, where he’s owned homes in Naples and Palm Beach. “I’ve been threatening now to do this for quite a while,” he said on his radio show. Don’t threaten us with a good time! More here.

—Former GMA3 lovebird Amy Robach went deep on her divorce from Melrose Place star Andrew Shue, revealing that her affair with co-host TJ Holmes cost her more than just a cushy ABC News gig—it also cost her reputation, her friends, and “most” of her “worldly possessions,” as she told Holmes on their podcast, referring to her having to sell off or give away items amid a costly divorce. More here.

RECENT READS

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—“Big money proves irresistible post-Khashoggi,” writes The Ankler’s Claire Atkinson as she traces all the ways Hollywood has gotten into bed with the Saudi Kingdom and has appeared to put outrage over the regime’s killing of the WaPo journalist firmly in the rearview mirror. More here.

—Taylor Swift’s entourage has come out swinging at The New York Times after it published a lengthy (5,000 words!) column by Anna Marks speculating on the pop star’s sexuality. “This article wouldn’t have been allowed to be written about Shawn Mendes or any male artist whose sexuality has been questioned by fans,” a Swift associate told CNN’s Oliver Darcy. Read here.

***WHAT ARE WE OUTRAGED ABOUT NOW?***

The right-wing outrage-industrial complex absolutely melted down last week over Disney’s announcement that the director of its next installment in the mega-successful Star Wars franchise is Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a feminist Pakistani-Canadian woman. The cries only grew louder after conservatives dug up an eight-year-old interview of Obaid-Chinoy—an Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker—saying she enjoys “making men uncomfortable” with her movies. Devoting dozens of on-air segments to this topic, Fox News and wannabe rival Newsmax raged about how this was proof that this was “straight out of the Bud Light playbook” and Star Wars had “just Dylan [Mulvaneyed] themselves,” invoking the Holy Grail of the conservative culture wars. Fox News host Jesse Watters brought anti-woke comedian Rob Schneider on to mock the decision, prompting the Deuce Bigalow star to go on a weird tangent that ended with him falsely claiming former Harvard president Claudine Gay is, well, gay. “I can’t get over this Claudine Gay thing. I’m surprised Disney didn’t hire her as the director,” he quipped. “She’s black, she’s a lesbian, her name is Gay. She checked more boxes than a warehouse worker at Amazon.” After other pundits griped that it would be “groundbreaking” to make a male the lead in the next movie while fuming that Disney has “lost the plot,” Fox News host Emily Compagno then delivered the most baffling take yet. After co-host Kayleigh McEnany rattled off a series of conservative “successes” in pop culture, such as the reactionary country smash “Try That in a Small Town,” Compagno declared her love for another iconic space opera that supposedly doesn’t succumb to wokeness. “That’s why I’m a Trekkie and not Star Wars,” she boasted, complete with a backward Vulcan hand salute. Needless to say, it didn’t take long for critics to point out just how “woke” Star Trek is and always has been. In the end, Fox News once again proves itself the final frontier of brain-dead punditry.

Confider will be off next week for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and will return with more saucy scooplets the week after. In the meantime, subscribe here and send us questions, complaints, or tips here or tips here or call/text us 551 655 2343.