If someone wanted to — oh, we don’t know — round up the most influential figures in the American news media for some reason, then Tigre on the Lower East Side on Thursday night would have been a good place to set up the net.
Oliver Darcy, who left CNN to start his own newsletter, Status, threw a bash to celebrate the launch.
He told the anyone-who’s-anyone crowd, “Going independent was one of the most terrifying things I’ve ever done. But the support in this room and [from] readers and subscribers made it all worth it.”
Among the revelers were CNN’s own star-cross’d lovers Jeff Zucker and Allison Gollust, CNNers Abby Phillip, John Berman, Brian Stelter (Darcy’s former colleague on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter), Don Lemon and Donie O’Sullivan, MSNBC’s Molly Jong-Fast and Ari Melber, “The Daily’s” Michael Barbaro, p.r. heavy hitters Natalie Raab, New York Magazine’s Lauren Starke, the Washington Post’s Olivia Petersen and Kathy Baird, Matthew Hiltzik, CBS’ Christa Robinson, Paramount’s Liza Burnett Fefferman and Gannett’s Lark-Marie Anton, as well as Noah Shachtman, Lachlan Cartwright, New York’s Charlotte Klein, Semafor’s Max Tani, Vanity Fair’s Tom Klundt, UTA’s Mary Noonan, Lis Smith and pretty much everyone else.
It was co-hosted by newsletter platform Beehiiv.
The publication bills itself as “the new, definitive nightly briefing that informs readers about what is really happening in the corridors of media power,” and claims to offer “hard-hitting reporting, uncompromising analysis [and] no false equivalences.”
It burst onto the scene in September with the scoop about New York Magazine’s D.C. reporter Olivia Nuzzi and her “personal relationship” with RFK Jr.