Vanity Fair

Inside the Feedback Loop Between the President and Fox News

According to conversations in recent days with current and former Fox executives, producers, and hosts, President Donald Trump looms almost as large in the minds of employees as Roger Ailes did. Fox hosts regularly get calls from Trump about segments he likes—or doesn’t. “When you worked at Fox, you knew that at any moment Roger Ailes was watching. Every day was like a job interview with Ailes. Now it’s the same way for Trump,” says a veteran Fox News contributor.

How President Trump Brought the Political Media Class to its Knees

President Donald Trump and his team understand that for the political press, the only thing that matters is what’s happening right now, not yesterday. And whether through his tweets or his surrogates in the briefing room, the president has been largely able to bait reporters into playing his game, because he knows what makes them tick.

Will Mark Zuckerberg Be Our Next President?

Increasingly, a number of influential people in Silicon Valley seem to think that Mark Zuckerberg will likely run for president of the United States one day. And some people, including myself, believe that he could indeed win.

“He wants to be emperor” is a phrase that has become common among people who have known him over the years. “Zuck has the kind of personality that, no matter what he decides to do, he’s going to do it better than anyone else on the planet,” someone close to him said to me a couple of years ago. “If Zuck was running a nonprofit, it would be the world’s biggest most successful nonprofit that would have distributed the most money in history to people around the world. It just so happens that he started his career building Facebook. Hence, the fact that it’s the biggest social network on the planet.”

The Front Page 2.0

[Commentary] There will always be a demand for high-quality news -- enough demand to support two or three national newspapers, on papyrus scrolls if necessary.

And the truth is that if only two or three newspapers survive, in national or global competition, that will still be more competition than we have now, with our collection of one-paper-town monopolies.

A second truth is that most newspapers aren’t very good and wouldn’t be missed by anybody who could get The New York Times or USA Today and some bloggy source of local news.

A third truth is that former roadblocks -- people’s refusal to get their content online or to pay for it -- are melting away like the snow.

A fourth truth is that rich foundations and individuals appear downright eager to jump in and supply foreign or other prestige news if newspapers won’t.