“Well, fuck,” one CNN journalist texted me after it became clear on Thursday evening that David Ellison was poised to secure Warner Bros. Discovery. The news, precipitated by Netflix’s decision to abandon its pursuit of the asset, immediately catalyzed a Cat-5 freakout among many of the network’s journalists, and for myriad reasons. A Paramount Skydance takeover—yes, pending regulatory approval—is likely to usher in historic layoffs across the company that will further diminish an already beleaguered newsroom. It will also mark the third ownership change in less than a decade. And both David and his father, Larry, have signaled their intention to make their news outlets more conservative.

Looming above all this, of course, is the prospect that Bari Weiss may now expand her editorial remit at CBS News to CNN, as well. “The panic at CNN right now is off the charts,” one network veteran said. Another, alluding to the companywide trauma that shook the network after the unceremonious defenestration of Jeff Zucker, in 2022, told me: “My phone has not blown up this bad, with this level of fury and sadness, since JZ got canned.”

In truth, it’s premature to assume that Bari will be given the same control over CNN that she now has over CBS News. And as some of these CNN employees lurch for their beta blockers and vodka, they might even recall that JZ is now an investor and operating partner at RedBird Capital, the Ellisons’ partner in the $111 billion deal. But why allow cooler heads to prevail—especially because that expansive CNN–CBS News mandate was certainly the initial plan that David floated during his courtship, before her early turbulence at CBS may have altered the trajectory. Bari’s quick missteps have emphasized the vertical learning curve between running a Substack-based business and managing a broadcast news network. Leading a global, 24-hour cable news channel is obviously a whole different order of magnitude.

That said, a merger would certainly expand Bari’s sphere of influence. Successive generations of executives have entertained a CNN–CBS News tie-up for at least three decades, and there is no world in which the Ellisons wouldn’t unite the two news divisions under one banner, given the mandate for cost savings. (The Ellisons have suggested the synergies lie in the $6 billion range; the Netflix board put the number at $16 billion. Either way, that’s a lot of pink slips.) In any scenario, Bari would almost certainly serve as the spiritual guide for the combined newsroom's politics and editorial posture, if not necessarily given the same authority to dictate every programming and personnel decision. At the very least, she and Anderson will have another chance to hash out their differences—one of the many intriguing sub-subplots.

The big question, of course, is who actually gets to run the network. Mark Thompson, the existing CNN chairman and C.E.O., is unlikely to stick around for the Ellison era, I’m told. But, as the history of both CBS and CNN has shown, the bench of capable television news executives has grown quite thin. Zucker’s politics certainly don’t align. One imagines the Ellisons will put in another call to David Rhodes, the former CBS News president who now runs Sky News in the U.K. At present, the Skydance team is too busy popping champagne corks to think about any of this.

In recent weeks, Mathias Döpfner, the imposing C.E.O. of Axel Springer, has been spotted with his charges in various hotel lobbies in Manhattan and Washington, spurring all manner of gossip among media insiders who perennially wonder whom he might hire or what he may acquire. Mathias has courted the intrigue, expressing a restive desire to acquire media assets in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, mounting a possibly quixotic eleventh-hour bid for The Telegraph, and, most notably, instigating an overhaul of Politico, the flagship U.S. asset of a transatlantic media business that, he hopes, can one day become the leading light for the democratic world.

Mathias and his top deputies, Jan Bayer and Claudius Senst, have met with candidates for the top editorial job at Politico, where founding editor-in-chief and paterfamilias John Harris is poised to finally vacate the chair. As I reported weeks ago, Mathias & Co. have met with Washington Post managing editor Peter Spiegel, Associated Press executive editor Julie Pace, and former New York Times editorial page editor James Bennet to discuss the position. Mathias also met with Politico senior executive editor Alex Burns, though it’s unclear whether that was the start of a real overture.

The editor search, however, may actually belie the true scope of Mathias’s ambitions for Politico. While this hunt has been underway, I’m told that Mathias, Jan, and Claudius have also been meeting with various business executives across the industry, sparking internal speculation that they might also be mulling replacing Politico C.E.O. Goli Sheikholeslami.

Jan, the president of Springer’s U.S. media arm, flatly denied that there were any plans to replace Goli. “Any speculation about questioning Goli or our confidence in her leadership is untrue,” he told me. Instead, Jan characterized the meetings as routine introductions with executives. “We are active in 25 countries, and of course we are meeting with industry leaders in the U.S., in Germany, in Poland… We’ve never talked about a replacement of one of our C.E.O.s,” he said. “It’s just to build our network.”

Two sources with indirect knowledge of the meetings asserted that this narrative was merely cover for talent scouting. At the very least, Mathias certainly seems new-C.E.O.-curious. Politico may be the bright spot in the Springer portfolio, with around $250 million in annual revenue and healthy 20 percent profit margins, but it’s also true that the business is stagnating as the available pool of Pro subscribers hits a ceiling. The most well-informed estimates I’ve heard suggest that Politico draws about a third of its revenue from its consumer advertising business and two-thirds from its high-priced annual recurring revenue subscription business. And though the business is profitable, a recent restructuring that laid off 3 percent of employees suggests some headwinds.

For all its success, Politico certainly does not match the scope of Mathias’s ambitions—not on the editorial side, where it has suffered years of spiritual ennui, nor on the business side. The business will likely need to get acquisitive in order to continue growing—though, as Mathias himself has pointed out, there aren’t a lot of compelling assets on the market…