Emily Atkin, passionate climate journalist behind the Heated blog, is launching a climate podcast just in time.
The twist is that she was approached by CBS News Lead Climate reporter, fired when Billionaire and Trump buddy Larry Ellison took over the network, hired a right wing toady to run it, who quickly cleared out the pesky climate desk, including Tracy Wholf, who insiders have described as the heart and soul of the team.
Not long ago, Wholf reached out to Atkin about collaborating. The early result is above.
Paramount Skydance emerged victorious in the bidding war for Warner Bros. after Netflix said it wouldn’t match the David Ellison-led company’s latest offer for the iconic Hollywood property.
Netflix pulled the plug on its deal soon after the Warner board of directors said it determined Paramount’s $31-per-share offer for the entire company was superior to Netflix’s bid for Warner’s movie and television studios and HBO Max streaming service. Paramount is now poised to take control of the entertainment company, home to properties and brands including HBO, Superman and Harry Potter.
Pending regulatory approval, Paramount will own not only Warner Bros. and HBO, but also many popular cable networks including CNN, TNT, TBS and Food Network. The deal would represent a major ground shift for the entertainment industry, which is trying to adapt to seismic shifts in audience habits and technology.
MAGA-aligned billionaires Larry Ellison and his son David have dramatically won a bidding war for CNN’s parent company—and are now on track to turn it Trumpy.
Their Paramount Skydance company has suddenly won its bidding war against Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery after upping its bid and the younger Ellison attending Donald Trump’s State of the Union address.
Senior White House officials have discussed internally their preference for Paramount Skydance to acquire Warner Bros Discovery in recent weeks, and one official has discussed potential programming changes at CNN with Larry Ellison, the largest shareholder of Paramount.
The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, come as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after the company announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.
Ellison often speaks to connections at the White House and in at least one phone call engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, the people said.
The conversation also touched on floating names to replace Burnett and the possibility of running CBS assets like its flagship 60 minutes program on CNN air – proposals that have animated the White House, the people said.
The Washington Post produced some of America’s finest climate journalism over the last decade, aggressively covering President Trump’s regulatory rollbacks and winning a Pulitzer Prize for a series about Earth’s fastest-warming places. Alongside the New York Times and the Associated Press, I don’t think any U.S. news outlet published a greater volume of urgent, high-quality climate and clean energy coverage.
Everything changed on Wednesday morning.
The Post sent layoff notices to at least 14 climate journalists, newsroom sources told me, part of a massive round of cost-cutting that will see more than 300 journalists lose their jobs — about 30% of all employees at the Jeff Bezos-owned company.
The climate team layoffs include eight writer/reporters, an editor and several video, data and graphics journalists, I’m told. I’m not publishing their names, since many of them haven’t discussed their situations publicly. But to see the invaluable work they and their colleagues have been doing, check out the Post’s climate page here.
After the layoffs, the Post will have five writer/reporters left on its climate desk, by my sources’ count, and possibly a few other journalists. That’s a far cry from the sweeping vision that then-executive editor Sally Buzbee unveiled in 2022, when she announced a major expansion of the outlet’s climate coverage. She said the Post “has long been a leader in covering the climate and environment” and would nearly triple the size of its climate team to more than 30 journalists.
Buzbee called global warming “perhaps the century’s biggest story.”
Below, I interviewed Atkin 5 years ago, when she told me that the best climate policy is democracy.