Grateful to have Liz on the show this week!

Now to the news

Media M&A is down 40% in the Trump 2.0 era.

This is certainly a far cry from the dealmaking waterfall that was expected from the media industry when Trump got elected back in November.

According to Liz, this dealmaking standstill can be directly attributed to the attacks that Trump has leveraged against the media.

For instance, the Paramount - Skydance merger, which was previously expected to close without issue, is now on rocky footing as Trump's FCC and Paramount backed, 60 minutes, continue to fight it out over Trump's $20 Billion lawsuit against 60 minutes.

So, will we see media m&a pick up over the rest of 2025?

For Liz, it's hard to say.

With that being said, it's probably safe to say that media favorable to Trump will have an easier time doing deals [Fox Corp. acquisition of conservative podcast network, Red Point Ventures] than those who aren't favorable to Trump.

Furthermore, the Washington Post continues to keep us at the edge of our seats. This week the company announced major restructuring efforts, in an effort to transform the company from “writer first paper” to a “reader first paper”.

In order to do so, the Washington Post will lean heavily into their suite of digital products and obsess over engagement, in order to meet their readers where they are. The company is also splitting up several of its newsrooms and beefing up it’s commitment to its venture group, WP Ventures.

Finally, Liz and I talked about the rise of independent journalism. She runs Project C, a weekly newsletter and consulting platform that helps traditional journalists go independent and has seen an enormous amount of demand for her services.

With job security no longer a given for even the most accomplished journalists, many talented journalists are going independent and using paid subscription strategies to capitalize on their talent and audience.

That’s all for me this week. I’m back next week with Puck’s new media correspondent, Julia Alexander.