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With Democrats taking control of the House when the new session starts Jan 3, lawmakers and media players are re-adjusting their strategies and preparing for a slew of new hearings and investigations. Democrats have already started to circle their wagons around Nexstar’s proposed purchase of Tribune Media, with House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Ranking Member David Cicilline (D-RI) saying that the merger “would undoubtedly lead to mass layoffs in newsrooms at a time when our free and diverse press is already under assault.”

Since her husband took office, Melania Trump has earned six figures from an unusual deal with a photo agency in which major media organizations have indirectly paid the Trump family despite a requirement that the photos be used only in positive coverage. President Donald Trump's most recent financial disclosure reveals that in 2017 the first lady earned at least $100,000 from Getty Images for the use of any of a series of 187 photos of the first family shot between 2010 and 2016 by Belgian photographer Regine Mahaux.

Apparently, special counsel Robert Mueller's team is asking witnesses pointed questions about whether Donald Trump was aware that Democratic e-mails had been stolen before that was publicly known, and whether he was involved in their strategic release. Mueller's investigators have asked witnesses whether Trump was aware of plans for WikiLeaks to publish the e-mails. They have also asked about the relationship between GOP operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and why President Trump took policy positions favorable to Russia.

The US official in charge of protecting American elections from hacking says the Russians successfully penetrated the voter registration rolls of several US states prior to the 2016 presidential election. Jeanette Manfra, the head of cybersecurity at the Department of Homeland Security, said she couldn't talk about classified information publicly, but in 2016, "We saw a targeting of 21 states and an exceptionally small number of them were actually successfully penetrated."

Facing an onslaught of competition from internet companies like Netflix and YouTube, the big media companies are conducting a radical self-examination and deciding they need a makeover.  A few weeks ago, Disney began expressing interest in buying 21st Century Fox, looking for new content from the company's movie studios and cable operations. A few days later, Comcast, the parent company of NBCUniversal, also expressed interest, and now Sony and Verizon are taking a look. At the same time, AT&T, the phone giant, is trying to acquire Time Warner, which owns Warner Brothers. Their goals?