Joe Pompeo

CNN president Jeff Zucker, the guy who first brought our president to the small screen when he green-lighted The Apprentice in 2004 while running NBC, had arguably schooled Donald Trump in the art of reality television. Halfway through President Trump’s first term, his instincts remain just as acute. If Fox News represents President Trump’s base and MSNBC has become a friendly platform for the resistance, CNN is the arena where both sides show up for cantankerous battle. “On Fox, you rarely hear from people who don’t support Trump,” Zucker said.

President-elect Donald Trump continued his media grievances tour on Nov 22, visiting The New York Times for both an off-the-record chat with its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, and an on-the-record conversation with reporters and columnists. The meeting was the latest example of President-elect Trump trying to reconnect with a media outlet that he has mostly left out in the cold since becoming president-elect, and which he made a major target during his presidential campaign.

Upon arriving, Trump had a 15-minute one on one with Sulzberger in the Churchill Room on the 16th floor of the Times building. A Times spokeswoman said it was “short and cordial” but declined to say anything about the tete-a-tete since it was off the record. “I have great respect for the New York Times. I have tremendous respect,” President-elect Trump said, according to a stream of live tweets from Times reporter Michael Grynbaum. “I think I've been treated very rough." But President-elect Trump said he wanted to turn a new leaf with the paper he so famously tangled with throughout the campaign, frequently calling the newspaper "the lying New York Times" or "the failing New York Times," and at one point even threatening to sue it.

Dozens of literary and media luminaries -- from Margaret Atwood, Jay McInerney, Martin Amis and Judy Blume, to Robert Caro, Kurt Andersen, Jill Lepore and Janet Malcolm -- are calling on the presidential candidates to "uphold freedom of the press and end intimidation toward journalists" at their nominating conventions these next two weeks.

The writers are among more than 20,000 people, as of the morning of July 15, who have signed a petition that PEN America, the century-old literary and free expression organization, will deliver on Monday to the Trump and Clinton campaigns, as well as to the Republican and Democratic national committees. Other organizations and media outlets, including The Nation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and The Intercept, partnered with PEN to collect signatures. “I think our members and partners are growing increasingly concerned with a climate of hostility toward the press in the context of the campaigns, and tactics that risk curbing press freedoms,” said PEN America executive director Suzanne Nossel. She cited recent episodes of “threats directed at journalists” and “remarks about the tightening of libel and defamation laws.”

Bloomberg LP media group employees have been informed that the first in a planned suite of "digital-led multi-platform brands," a politics site being developed by high-profile political journalists and "Game Change" authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, both poached by Bloomberg in May with annual salaries reported to be north of $1 million, will debut on October 6 -- 30 days before the 2014 Midterms -- in tandem with a daily half-hour television show hosted by the duo that will air in Bloomberg TV's 5 p.m. timeslot as well as streaming online.

Bloomberg Businessweek editor-in-chief Josh Tyrangiel, who's been working closely with Smith on the media-group strategy, described the show as "much closer to 'Pardon the Interruption' on ESPN than 'Meet the Press,'" according to a partial transcript provided by a source.

"One of our biggest advantages in politics is we are not ideological, we are not a sewer." (Presumably the show will share the name of the site: Bloomberg Politics.)

The next launch in the sequence is expected to be Bloomberg Business, which will align with the content of Businessweek and businessweek.com. There had been talk of launching the business site ahead of Bloomberg Politics in September, but the internal target is now looking more like December, according to sources with knowledge of the roll-out.

Other digital launches in the hopper include Bloomberg Markets, a financial title, and the luxury-oriented Bloomberg Pursuits, which is being overseen by Vanity Fair veteran Chris Rovzar; they will align with the respective print magazines of the same names. A tech site is also being discussed, sources said.