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** OPINION
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** Trump’s overnight posting frenzy draws swift pushback, fact-checks
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President Donald Trump speaks during a cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

Once again, President Donald Trump went on a Truth Social frenzy, and said a bunch of things that simply are not true.

The latest Trump outburst came Wednesday night and continued into Thursday morning.

The Daily Beast’s Cameron Adams reported ([link removed]) that during a 36-minute stretch from 9:23 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday until 9:59 p.m., Trump had 48 posts. Adams described them as “wild conspiracy theories and ego-boosting posts.”

That was just a portion of Trump’s social media barrage.

CNN’s Jake Tapper tweeted ([link removed]) , “Good morning! In the 9 pm ET hour then recommencing in the 5 am ET, the president posted or reposted more than 60 times, attacking President Obama, PM Carney, Gov Newsom, Gov Walz, Rep Omar, Alex Pretti, and sharing a bunch of untethered nonsense about the 2020 election.”

CNN’s Daniel Dale called it ([link removed]) a “late-night nonsense-posting spree.”

In one post, Trump falsely claimed that Walmart is about to shut 250 of its 303 California stores because of the state’s “$22 per hour minimum wage.”

Dale tweeted, “The minimum wage is $16.90, not $22, and Walmart tells me this morning that the mass-closure claim is fake, in fact that it just opened a new store in California last month.”

In response to Dale’s tweet, California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote ([link removed]) , “You mean the President is lying? He would never!”

In another tweet, Newsom wrote ([link removed]) , “We cannot believe we have to say any of this out loud. We cannot believe this is real life. And we truly cannot believe this man has the nuclear codes. Deep breaths, everyone. Three more years.”

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** As the Los Angeles Times declines, a ‘superbloom’ of new outlets emerges
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For this item, I turn it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.

Just over two years ago, the Los Angeles Times had more than 500 journalists in its newsroom. Now, that figure is closer to 300, according to its newsroom directory — a 40% decline.

The paper, which had survived the pandemic without layoffs, has spent the past few years wracked by rounds of job cuts, buyouts and resignations. It is now smaller than it was in 2018, when billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong acquired the paper.

Soon-Shiong himself has become a controversial figure after years of receiving praise for buying the paper and growing its staff. While the first rounds of cuts predate Soon-Shiong’s contentious decision to stop the editorial board from endorsing Democratic candidate Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election, his actions since have driven multiple high-profile resignations, and many blame him for the turmoil at the paper.

Amid the tumult, outsiders are sensing opportunity. Five news initiatives have popped up in the region in as many months. A sixth is expected to launch this spring. The new outlets seek to both fill gaps in coverage that the Times’ decline has created, as well as those that have always existed in an area as large and diverse as Los Angeles.

“It's a vast metropolitan area,” said Karin Klein, the inaugural editor of L.A. Reported, a digital nonprofit that launched Jan. 18. Klein had previously worked at the Times before resigning after the endorsement debacle. “The LA Times is doing some terrific work — especially some terrific investigative work — but it's not the paper it used to be, and nobody would say that it's the paper it used to be. It doesn't cover nearly as much.”

Thanks to the new outlets, Los Angeles is experiencing a ‘superbloom’ at a time when news deserts are multiplying ([link removed]) across the country. Read more about the new initiatives — which include a tabloid, a newsletter, two Substacks and a digital startup — here ([link removed]) .


** Big name makes big move
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David Brooks, who has been an opinion writer at The New York Times since 2002, is leaving the paper to join The Atlantic.

Opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury said in a note ([link removed]) , “His columns have often served as a testing ground for ideas that would later reshape the national discourse.”

Fellow Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman said, “I am so sorry to hear this news. I cannot imagine reading The Times and not being able to savor one of David’s deep essays on politics, society and human connection. David and I have had a running joke all these years that we almost always end up in the same place politically, but we get there by totally different routes. We arrive at the same conclusion that our future depends on building and proliferating communities built on healthy interdependencies cemented by shared values. This news really leaves me bummed.”

Brooks is joining The Atlantic as a staff writer beginning next month. In addition to his writing, Brooks will host a new weekly video podcast that will launch in the spring.

In a note to staff ([link removed]) , The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, writes: “David’s work –– his columns, his stories for us, and his many books –– have made him known and acclaimed around the world. He is, among other things, America’s best pop sociologist, someone with a reporter’s curiosity and a writer’s grace. He is an unparalleled diagnostician of the faults and weaknesses of governments, institutions, and social structures, as our readers know from such stories as ‘The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake,’ ([link removed]) ‘Confessions of a Republican Exile,’ ([link removed]) and ‘How the Ivy League Broke America.’ ([link removed]
omic-segregation/680392/) ”

The Atlantic said, “The forthcoming podcast will explore the moral, social, and philosophical underpinnings of human decency — with a particular focus on the role that institutions play in shaping communities and ideologies.”

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** Media news, tidbits and interesting links for your weekend review
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* Still lots of uncertainty about looming cuts at The Washington Post, but speculation continues to surround major slashes to the foreign and sports desks. CNN’s Brian Stelter reports: “Washington Post’s White House team urges Jeff Bezos to halt massive newsroom cuts.” ([link removed]) In an internal Slack message, Post White House bureau chief Matt Viser wrote, “If the plan, to the extent there is one, is to reorient around politics we wanted to emphasize how much we rely on collaboration with foreign, sports, local — the entire paper, really. And if other sections are diminished, we all are.” Here’s more ([link removed]) from Semafor’s Maxi Tani.
* Podcaster and longtime sports journalist Pablo Torre lamented the possibility of the Post eliminating its sports department. Torre said on his “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast ([link removed]) , “What you’re losing is another place where people can get accountability, where people can get reporting that is ostensibly uncompromised by the incentives that are otherwise crawling over sports media. And that’s the shame of it.” He added, “What I mourn is the loss of another newsroom that had infrastructure and collective experience and collective expertise that no longer is being funded. The question of like, what can we mourn here as a matter of how (expletive) it is, is that there are these administrations now with the CEOs included for whom they are, they’re not standing up for the thing that their institution that they’re trying to save now was most distinguished by, which is to say the quality and the necessity of the journalists.” Awful Announci
ng’s Matt Yoder has more ([link removed]) .
* My Poynter colleague, Nicole Slaughter Graham, with “How exhausted Minneapolis journalists are covering a prolonged federal crackdown.” ([link removed])
* The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer with “Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong.” ([link removed])
* Video from The Associated Press: “AP reporter describes federal officers pushing journalists back to car as they documented operation.” ([link removed])
* For Poynter, Angie Drobnic Holan — director of the International Fact-Checking Network — with “Let’s talk (again) about why fact-checking works.” ([link removed])
* The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Joe Flint with “Barry Diller Told Warner Discovery He Is Interested in Buying CNN.” ([link removed])
* The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Weprin with “Brendan Carr Responds to Kimmel Over New FCC Equal Time Rules: ‘If You’re Fake News, You’re Not Going to Qualify.’” ([link removed])
* The Wall Street Journal’s Jessica Toonkel, Dana Mattioli and Kate Clark with “Amazon in Talks to Invest Up to $50 Billion in OpenAI.” ([link removed])
* The New York Times’ Adam Nossiter with “John L. Allen Jr., Journalist With Inside Access to the Vatican, Dies at 61.” ([link removed])
* The New York Times’ Dana Goldstein with “She Fought a Book Ban. She May Never Teach Again.” ([link removed])


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* Join a foundational career and leadership development 101 course — fully virtual for ambitious media professionals without direct reports. Apply now ([link removed]) .
* Reporters and editors with ambition to do investigative journalism: Get guidance from ProPublica’s Alexandra Zayas in this five-week, hands-on seminar. Enroll today ([link removed]) .

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected] (mailto:[email protected]) .
The Poynter Report is your daily dive into the world of media, packed with the latest news and insights. Get it delivered to your inbox Monday through Friday by signing up here ([link removed]) . And don’t forget to tune into our biweekly podcast ([link removed]) for even more.
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