NEW YORK TIMES EXECUTIVE EDITOR DEAN BAQUET said Glenn Thrush “behaved in ways that we do not condone” and “acted offensively.” Yet Baquet decided that Thrush could return to the Times after a two-month suspension stemming from the paper's investigation into allegations of inappropriate behavior toward young women journalists. Thrush, however, will have to leave the White House beat and continue substance abuse counseling. Meanwhile, Random House said Thrush is no longer attached to a Trump book project with colleague Maggie Haberman, while his status as an MSNBC contributor remains up in the air. From my piece:

— Vox’s Laura McGann wrote last month that Thrush made unwanted advances or behaved inappropriately toward four women journalists, including herself when they both worked at POLITICO. While several Times journalists told POLITICO in recent weeks that they felt Thrush acted recklessly and his reported actions reflected poorly on the paper, some felt that he did not deserve to be fired because the alleged incidents occurred outside the workplace and involved women whom he did not directly manage or, in some cases, work with.

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— The decision about Thrush’s fate has been closely watched inside and outside the newsroom given the Times’ groundbreaking reporting this year on sexual misconduct allegations against powerful men in media and entertainment. Vanity Fair reported last week that dozens of staffers at the Times and POLITICO had been interviewed for what had become “a sex-reckoning test case.”

— I'm seeing a good amount of criticism on Twitter over the decision, along with questions about what offensive behavior, specifically, is Thrush suspended for and what actions would cross a line to merit firing at the Times? And why can't Thrush still cover the White House if he can resume duties as a reporter? The decision has also invited charges of hypocrisy from some given the Times' exemplary reporting on sexual misconduct against powerful men. As I reported Tuesday, the Times is planning to soon launch an ad campaign highlighting its sexual harassment coverage and will likely by a contender for journalism's highest honors in the coming months — just as Thrush's byline returns.

Good morning and welcome to Morning Media. Please send tips to [email protected] and @mlcalderone. Cristiano Lima (@viaCristiano) and Daniel Lippman (@dlippman) contributed to the newsletter. Archives. Subscribe.

THE VIEW FROM VOX: "What the New York Times decided to do with the facts we presented in our Thrush piece was up to them,” editor-in-chief Lauren Williams said. “I can only speak to the soundness of our story and the bravery of Laura McGann in choosing to tell it." Vox co-founder and editor-at-large Ezra Klein tweeted that he didn’t know “what the Times should’ve done with Thrush,” but “watched the efforts to plant oppo and smear [McGann] in the aftermath of her reporting.” (It’s unclear exactly what Klein meant, though sources told Vanity Fair last week how McGann once met with the Times regarding a job several months ago). McGann also wrote Wednesday on Baquet’s decision.

SOUND BITES

“I'm less concerned about Thrush being reinstated than I am that the NYT doesn't seem to understand why his behavior was wrong. There is no explanation about what they found ‘offensive’ & no reckoning of how media systems could have allowed his harassment to flourish...What the NYT is doing — and has done since Thrush's suspension — is signal to women that their careers are not as important as men's. Full stop.” [Jessica Valenti]

“So they're not firing Glenn Thrush but they're removing him from the White House beat where he did stellar work because only people who act inoffensively can be on the White House beat? Similarly, it's okay to put someone offensive at, say, Foggy Bottom? [John Podhoretz]

"One thing I’ve heard from a couple Times sources is that there’s been chatter the editors might try moving Glenn to Metro. Doesn’t seem implausible?" [Joe Pompeo]

IT DOESN'T: I've heard similar speculation about Metro, which presumably could be a good fit for the former New York City tabloid reporter. We'll see.

PENSKE BUYS MAJORITY STAKE IN ROLLING STONE: Variety reports that its parent company has acquired 51 percent of Wenner Media, the parent company of Rolling Stone, in a deal valued at over $100 million. Singapore-based BandLab already owns the other 49 percent of the iconic music and culture magazine that just celebrated its 50th anniversary. Notably, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner will remain editorial director following the deal. “I am so proud of our accomplishments over the past 50 years and know Penske Media is the ideal match for us to thrive in today’s media landscape,” Wenner said.

— “Our interest in Rolling Stone is driven by its people, its cultural significance, and the globally-recognized brand that has no peer in its areas of influence,” said Penske, whose portfolio has expanded in recent years to include Variety, Women’s Wear Daily, Robb Report, and Indiewire. “We believe that Penske Media is uniquely qualified to partner with the Wenners to ensure the brand continues to ascend for decades across multiple media platforms — we’re eager to get started.”

— Wenner biographer Joe Hagan weighed in on Twitter: “There was a time when Jann Wenner justified controversial decisions, whether firings or stories, by saying Rolling Stone is ‘my magazine.’ He can't say that any more. That's existential. In the deal with Jay Penske, I think Jann Wenner pulled off quite a feat, which is to essentially sell RS and keep it alive without having to leave the building. The relationship between Penske and Jann will be a fascinating one to watch.”

WASHINGTON POST RAIDS WALL STREET JOURNAL: Journal reporters Paul Sonne and Shane Harris are soon heading to the Post to cover the Pentagon and intelligence, respectively, according to sources familiar with the moves. The Post has already hired three other reporters from the Journal’s Washington bureau this year — Devlin Barrett, Beth Reinhard, and Damian Paletta — and last year nabbed Adam Entous, who is now heading to the New Yorker.

MEDIAITE IS OUT with its most influential of 2017, with Fox & Friends — the show the president of the United States wakes up to — topping the list. Jeff Zucker, Sean Hannity, Matt Drudge, and Rachel Maddow follow and the other 70 more influencers on the list can be found here.

BREITBART EDITOR BELIEVED MOORE ACCUSER: CNN’s Oliver Darcy speaks to editor-in-chief Alex Marlow about Breitbart’s coverage of the recent Alabama Senate race. The right-wing site not only enthusiastically backed Republican Roy Moore, but also attempted to discredit the Washington Post’s reporting on sexual misconduct allegations against him. And yet, Darcy writes: Marlow “stressed that he was personally uncomfortable with the behavior attributed by The Post to Moore, and noted that he did believe the accusations from Leigh Corfman, who said Moore assaulted her while she was 14 — they were ‘not perfect,’ he said, but had ‘a lot of credibility.’”

— Marlow still saw political motivations behind The Post’s reporting on Moore, according to Darcy. Marlow said: "Why The Washington Post chose to lump in a bunch of far, far, far lesser accusations immediately rose my suspicion that they were trying to set narrative more than they were just trying to report the story.” Though Moore lost, Marlow said chief Steve Bannon and Breitbart remain “the most feared names in politics. “

HERE'S ANOTHER VIEW, from The Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove: “Breitbart News was the bright, shiny object of 2016, when the angry-populist, nationalist, right-wing web operation went all-in for Donald Trump, and the bet paid off with lavish winnings. But as 2017 draws to a close, reality has inevitably intruded, and the tendentious news site — founded a decade ago by the late Andrew Breitbart as a rebellious antidote to what he saw as the hypocrisies of the political and media establishments — spent the first year of Trump’s volatile presidency losing its former luster.”

MEANWHILE, NEVER TRUMPERS CARRY ON: Sam Tanenhaus, the former New York Times book review editor and author of a forthcoming biography of William F. Buckley titled “The Death of Conservatism,” checks in with Never Trumpers like David Frum, Jennifer Rubin, and Ross Douthat for an Esquire feature.

— “You can tell this story as one of a changing media environment,” Douthat said. “From Buckley to Roger Ailes” — the longtime head of Fox News — “you go from a time when the leading media impresario was intellectual and high-minded to someone who was primarily interested in making money.” Douthat added: “The election proved elite conservative media doesn’t matter. Every major non–Wall Street Journal columnist was against Trump. The Weekly Standard was against Trump. National Review was against Trump. None of it mattered.”

— Tanenhaus also traced the Journal editorial page’s shift from Trump critics to broadly supportive of insurgent candidate as the Republican primary wound down. “Several sources pointed to the editorials by one writer, James Freeman,” he writes. “‘All-in for Ted Cruz’ during the primaries, Freeman wrote a strong attack on Trump’s Mob dealings, and had a second ready to go. But as Trump got closer to clinching the nomination, Paul Gigot kept delaying publication, saying ‘it needed work.’ Once Trump became the likely Republican nominee, Freeman executed a neat volte-face. ‘The facts suggest that Mrs. Clinton is more likely to abuse liberties than Mr. Trump,’ he wrote. ‘America managed to survive Mr. Clinton’s two terms, so it can stand the far less vulgar Mr. Trump.'"

MARK ZUCKERBERG WINS ‘MISINFORMER OF THE YEAR’ AWARD: Media Matters, the progressive watchdog group, has given this title in the past to familiar targets like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. So why Zuckerberg? "Much of what Facebook has done in 2017 has amounted more to a public relations effort than a deeper systemic and underlying approach," Media Matters president Angelo Carusone told Mashable. "What the election did was really illustrate the underlying problems — enabling all this right-wing misinformation and misinformation more broadly."

AND CHARLIE ROSE LOSES ANOTHER: CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism rescinded its lifetime achievement award given in 2010 to Charlie Rose, who has already lost honors from The International Center for Journalists, Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the University of Kansas journalism school.

WHY ONE FOX NEWS HOST ISN’T SEEKING TRUMP INTERVIEW: “We’re always going to report on the president,” Neil Cavuto told the Associated Press. “You can’t NOT report on the president. But my goal is not to curry favor so I can get an interview with the president.”

— “Any interview would require me to get clarifications on many of the president’s own statements,” Cavuto said. “I could conceivably be spending half the allotted time just trying to have him explain his saying this is the largest tax cut in history when it isn’t or that he inherited the biggest economic mess ever when he didn’t. Just trying to set the record straight, I’d run straight into a wall and the interview would be over.”

TWO WOMEN JOIN DEFAMATION SUIT AGAINST BILL O’REILLY, reports Cristiano Lima. Former Fox News producer Andrea Mackris and Fox Business Network host Rebecca Gomez Diamond joined a motion filed by Rachel Witlieb Bernstein earlier this month against the ousted Fox News host and the network alleging they had been “smeared with lies by a bully who thinks that his victims are afraid to answer to them.”

— Mackris sued O’Reilly for sexual harassment in 2004. Diamond settled allegations of harassment against O’Reilly in 2011. Bernstein, the original complainant, settled claims in 2002 that did not include sexual harassment, but says she repeatedly spoke out about his behavior to officials at the channel. "These three women seek to stop O’Reilly and Fox from continuing to bully and malign women O’Reilly abused and harassed,” Nancy Erika Smith, an attorney for the women, said in the suit.

— Bill O’Reilly’s legal team, however, dismissed the renewed allegations. “The latest filing has absolutely no merit as we will show in court,” O’Reilly’s lawyer, Frederic Newman of Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney, LLP, said in a statement.

EULOGY FOR THE ALT-WEEKLY, from POLITICO columnist and former Washington City Paper editor Jack Shafer: “My love for alt-weeklies doesn’t blind me to the fact that they weren’t consistently great. But the same applies to most daily newspapers. What did distinguish alt-weekly copy from what you got in your daily was a palpable sense of the city, a connection most dailies lost as their readers and many of their writers moved to the suburbs or more genteel parts of town. Cities are places of conflict, congestion, confusion, creativity, drugs, larceny, sex and licentiousness, all of which make great copy. The closer you were to the city—and at alt-weekly salaries few could afford to live anywhere else—the richer the variety of stories that would come your way. Plus, alt-weekly writers, being younger, were always more willing to take chances.”

REVOLVING DOOR

Deadspin editor-in-chief Tim Marchman is joining Gizmodo Media’s editorial executive team as head of special projects. The company will soon begin a search for Deadspin's next top editor.

Nancy Shute, co-host of NPR’s health blog “Shots,” has been named editor in chief of Science News.

EXTRAS

— Rose McGowan led a roundtable discussion for The Cut with women who spoke out against Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K. and John Hockenberry.

— Gizmodo Media Group CEO Raju Narisetti has some good advice for reporters covering hot digital news startups.

— Will robots take over journalism jobs? Poynter’s Melody Kramer writes that “in many ways, they already have.”

— Tom Hanks says he’d turn down a White House invite for screening for “The Post.”