Richard Tofel

CBS News and the First Moves of its Nepo Baby Owner Learning about the limits of billionaires

Re-upping this as Bari Weiss, with experience only as an opinion journalist, becomes editor-in-chief of CBS News
dicktofel.substack.com/p/cbs-news-a...

Aaron Judge batting .444 in the postseason, with an OPS over 1, and almost identical to his career regular season OPS.
It isn’t his fault.

Trump Keeps Blurring the Line Between Capitalism and Socialism The president’s plans on drug pricing echo themes of Zohran Mamdani, democratic socialist running for mayor of New York.

In which a Wall Street Journal columnist explains why the economic approaches of Trump and Mamdani are actually similar.

www.wsj.com/economy/trum...

Update: NPR request for TRO denied

Editorial overhaul: Washington Post's new opinion chief feels the weight of the challenges ahead The Washington Post's new opinion editor Adam O'Neal spoke with Fox News Digital about the challenges he faces as he reshapes the paper's editorial pages.

New edit page editor of WaPo says the quiet part out loud: the paper’s readers are “overwhelmingly liberal” and “overwhelmingly located in just a few blue states.”
He’s not interested in those who subscribed as a form of protest and looking to broaden readership.

www.foxnews.com/media/editor...

How far have the football Giants fallen? Albany TV is showing Buffalo (more than twice as far away) game instead.

What the Public Memory of Charlie Kirk Revealed

Helpful antidote from Nikole Hannah-Jones to the normalizing of Charlie Kirk’s most repulsive views, including a devastating subtweet of Ezra Klein
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/m...

NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting clash as federal funding declines NPR asked a federal judge to block CPB from awarding a $57.9 million grant to a new consortium of public media institutions to operate the satellite that connects the public radio system.

The fight here is more nearly between NPR and some of its leading member stations, more than with CPB (which is going out of business).
Key: “privately executives for CPB and PBS distanced themselves from NPR and Maher.”
www.npr.org/2025/09/27/n...

On Pennsylvania Ave., Michael Milken’s Curious Temple to the American Dream

Naming a museum of capitalism after Mike Milken is like naming a museum of literature after Clifford Irving, or an art museum after Elmyr de Hory
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/27/b...

Trump's TikTok deal payment criticized as 'shakedown scheme' by experts The U.S. government will collect a multibillion-dollar fee from the American investors who will take over TikTok. Some experts call the fee and other deals like it "extortion."

Was happy to talk to @davidfolkenflik.bsky.social about Trump’s crony capitalism
www.npr.org/2025/09/26/g...

Whatever any of us may think of how Jim Comey handled things in October 2016, I have known him for 40 years and he would never have lied to or obstructed Congress.
These charges are a disgrace to our nation and a fundamental attack on the rule of law.

American journalism and America's news consumption are out of sync In this dangerous moment of unprecedented government censorship and propaganda we need to think differently about how to connect news consumers to the news and information they need

Two guys who both ran news organizations but aren’t journalists, share our respect for great reporting and talk about the world we’re in right now. I hope you'll listen to my conversation with @dicktofel.bsky.social.
open.substack.com/pub/edwineis...

We Need to Think Differently About How People Get “News” On changing ideas about competitive sets, and a case for much greater customization

We hear a lot about how people get news these days, but we need to take the changes more seriously— and to do things about it. This week’s Second Rough Draft newsletter

open.substack.com/pub/dicktofe...

4 50-home run seasons without steroids:
Babe Ruth
Aaron Judge
nobody else
2 50-home run seasons after age 30 without steroids:
Babe Ruth
Aaron Judge
nobody else

In considering anyone’s demands that someone donate to Charlie Kirk’s organization, remember that Kirk repeatedly insisted that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 should never have been passed, and that Martin Luther King Jr was unworthy of honor. There is more, but that seems like enough.

That is not a denial.

Remember Trump’s first term surgeon general? He just posted this on the other place, “ICYMI”
www.autismspeaks.org/science-news...

This is an outrage— Hegseth forbidding the reporting of admittedly unclassified info without his permission.
But I am not sure it is or should be framed as a legal problem. Could it be time for the independent press to pull its reporters and cameras out of the Pentagon unless this move is withdrawn?

YouTube video by The Seneca Project Charlie Kirk in his own words. We Report. You Decide.

I agree that it is important to remember Charlie Kirk.
He deserved to live. I am very sorry he was killed, and mourn for his family.
If you want to remember him also for his views, here is one sampling:
youtube.com/watch?v=6oVc...

Devastating, detailed review of the interlocking corruption of Eric Adams and Donald Trump
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

Tom Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents. Trump's DOJ shut it down. The FBI and Justice officials closed the investigation, which a Justice Department appointee had called a “deep state” probe in early 2025.

Breaking: the FBI filmed Trump’s border czar accepting $50,000 in cash to help get federal contracts.
Kash Patel dropped the case.

www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/t...

Trump’s private lawyers in his latest ridiculous lawsuit against the New York Times have just had a dunce cap placed on their heads and been told to sit in the corner by a federal district judge appointed by a GOP president.
Complaint dismissed; try again.

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

Appreciate this boost from a longtime key voice of CBS radio.

CBS News and the First Moves of its Nepo Baby Owner Learning about the limits of billionaires

“CBS News and the First Moves of its Nepo Baby Owner
Learning about the limits of billionaires”

By @dicktofel.bsky.social

dicktofel.substack.com/p/cbs-news-a...

If you hate what ABC did to Kimmel, just refuse to watch #Grey’sAnatomy tonight. Don’t buy tickets to Disney movies. And spread the word.
That seems to be the only currency Bob Iger cares about.

The point is this: Hollywood made itself feel good giving Colbert two standing ovations three nights ago.
But now it will take more than getting on your feet and clapping.
Who’s prepared to do what?

Bob Iger has just surrendered editorial control of ABC to a federal bureaucrat.
Message: he won’t permit anything on air which the White House is willing to threaten.
Certainly hope creatives will disassociate themselves from Disney.
Need to hear from Stephanopoulos, Robin Roberts, Quinta Brunson

Je suis Jimmy Kimmel

The problem with picking Weiss is that entering the cable news-style fray is itself the wrong choice. Weiss is and always has been an opinion journalist, and the Free Press is fundamentally an opinion site. CBS News has never been in the opinion business...

I deplored the impending rise of Bari Weiss at CBS News on my blog last week, but @dicktofel.bsky.social got at the real problem better than I did. substack.com/home/post/p-...

CBS News and the First Moves of its Nepo Baby Owner Learning about the limits of billionaires

The latest billionaire in the news business. This week’s (early) Second Rough Draft newsletter
open.substack.com/pub/dicktofe...