IT WAS THE LAST MONDAY in January 2022 when Jeff Zucker realized his world was about to come crashing down. The semi-secret romance he'd been having with his deputy, Allison Gollust, was going to become public. He was being forced to resign from his job as president of CNN. His $300 million legacy project, the CNN+ streaming service, would be orphaned. And Zucker's former friends, the Cuomo brothers, were out for blood.
What to do? He huddled at his apartment with Gary Ginsberg, the media executive and former Rupert Murdoch adviser whom he'd known for years. Ginsberg told him he needed Risa Heller. A 43-year-old Brooklyn Heights mother of three, Heller has become the crisis-communications warrior of choice for the city's most cancellable elites.
"I didn't know her," Zucker tells me. "The first time I ever met her was the day she walked into my apartment the day before my departure was announced. And she ended up sitting in my kitchen for like the better part of the next 72 hours."
"The thing about Risa is she's a bit of a character," he says. "She comes in, sets her coffee down, takes over the room, and comes out with that accent that I can't even figure out where it's from I'm not quite sure if it's Bloomfield Hills or Long Island or Brooklyn or what." And then she demands you tell her the entire truth about how things got to the point that you had to call her, before telling you what to expect and helping you navigate it.
How badly does Zucker think it would have gone for him without Heller? "That's an impossible question to answer," he says. "But I think she absolutely made one of the worst weeks of my life a tiny bit easier."
Denne historien er fra February 13 - 26, 2023-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra February 13 - 26, 2023-utgaven av New York magazine.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
