Former CNN boss Jeff Zucker has joined a new buyout firm called RedBird IMI — and has been circling media properties including the Washington Post, Semafor, Puck and Air Mail, according to a report.
Zucker, who resigned from CNN for failing to disclose his relationship with top communications officer Allison Gollust, is working with RedBird, a private equity firm that is flush with $1 billion in backing from big investors in the worlds of media and finance, according to the New York Times.
Zucker has met with Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post, according to the report. He has also been scouting deals with media startups Semafor and Puck and has met with the founders of Punchbowl News, the Capital Hill-focused media startup that was launched in 2021.
Currently, Zucker is one of at least three suitors exploring a deal to take a majority stake in Air Mail, the media company founded by former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.
According to the Times, Zucker has also been focused on CNN since he was pushed out, and has been very critical of the job that his replacement, Chris Licht, has been doing.
The publication said Zucker has not been in talks to buy the network, despite his interest in his former employer.
He has instead lamented that the network’s current owners have gutted CNN, following sweeping layoffs.
But Zucker did explore a deal for the network before. In late 2020, he and Andrew Morse, CNN’s former digital chief, met with Emerson Collective, the umbrella company founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, and had preliminary conversations about a potential spinout of the network, the Times reported.
A deal never happened, and ultimately, CNN’s parent company at the time, AT&T, struck a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery instead.
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