Team Trump Is Boycotting CNN

Ad Age "Media Guy" columnist Simon Dumenco's media roundup for the morning of Feb. 1: "Have I told you how sick I am of me?" That's what Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway recently told The Hollywood Reporter's Michael Wolff (via text message, no less), reflecting on her overexposure. (If you missed it, Wolff's piece about Conway is right here.) For those who feel the same way, it turns out the Trump White House has thoughtfully created a Conway-free Zone (see No. 3, below). 1. The full-width, all-caps banner headline on the front page of The New York Times this morning reads "TRUMP'S COURT PICK SETS UP POLITICAL CLASH." A story inside the paper about Trump naming Neil Gorsuch as his nominee to replace Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court is headlined "Long and Winding Path From Nomination to a Seat in the Courtroom" and has been repackaged for the web as "Trump Has Made His Supreme Court Nomination. What Happens Next?" Good question! Beyond explaining the standard mechanics of the confirmation process, the Times' Daniel Victor offers some context: "Expect the task to drag on for months: Elena Kagan was confirmed 87 days after she was nominated, in 2010; Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation in 2009 took 66 days, and Samuel Alito Jr. was confirmed 82 days after his nod, in 2006." 2. Trump's reality-TV-esque approach to naming his Supreme Court pick has not gone unnoticed. See, for instance, this Telegraph (U.K.) story: "'Was that a surprise?' Donald Trump brings Apprentice-style drama to Supreme Court announcement." Or Jimmy Kimmel's take last night: 3. Beyond Gorsuch-related chatter, one of this morning's most buzzed-about stories is Politico's "White House ices out CNN." Hadas Gold's post begins, "The White House has refused to send its spokespeople or surrogates onto CNN shows, effectively icing out the network from on-air administration voices. 'We're sending surrogates to places where we think it makes sense to promote our agenda,' said a White House official, acknowledging that CNN is not such a place, but adding that the ban is not permanent." 4. In rich-guys-who-are-not-the-president news, we've got a bumper crop of headlines about Johnny Depp today, including: "Johnny Depp Spent $3M to Blast Hunter S. Thompson's Ashes Out of Cannon: Lawsuit" (NBC News), "So Apparently Johnny Depp Spends $30,000 Per Month On Wine" (The Huffington Post) and "What's eating Johnny Depp's bank account? A horse farm, 14 homes, a bespoke cannon…" (The Guardian). 5. In other rich-guys-who-are-not-the-president news, Reuters has a story headlined "Warren Buffett: I bought $12 billion of stock after Trump won." 6. Recode's Kurt Wagner is out with a post this morning headlined "Facebook is testing a lot more ads in a lot more places." (Why? See the subhead: "The company needs to prove News Feed isn't its only cash cow.") 7. Finally, here's a GIF of Donald Trump drawing a dinosaur, courtesy of the @TrumpDraws Twitter account (bio: "i'm the president and i like to draw"), which is less than 48 hours old and just six tweets deep, but already has more than 100,000 followers. dinosar pic.twitter.com/R629EU9WDh Simon Dumenco, aka Media Guy, is an Ad Age editor-at-large. You can follow him on Twitter @simondumenco.

Team Trump Is Boycotting CNN

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