Tension at CNN: Staff Reeling From Budget Cuts as Kaitlan Collins Buys Lavish Island Getaway
Tension at CNN: Staff Reeling From Budget Cuts as Kaitlan Collins Buys Lavish Island Getaway
Suck it — I’ll be in Nantucket.
Page Six hears that there’s some sniping at CNN over office gossip that star anchor Kaitlan Collins has snapped up a “very expensive” Nantucket vacation home — while her colleagues are reeling from staff cuts, newsroom reorgs, and other belt-tightening measures at the struggling network.
“She just bought some bougie place and CNN people are grossed out that she paid so much,” said a source. They added for good measure, “She’s way overpaid.”
Defending Collins, a different CNN insider pointed out that she has not one but two jobs at the network: She’s both its chief White House correspondent and the anchor of her own primetime show, “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
But her workload doesn’t seem to be much of a salve to the stressed-out rank-and-file.
After new chairman and CEO Mark Thompson took over in October 2023, he collapsed the network’s three newsrooms into one to cut overhead, and had several rounds of layoffs. In January this year, some 200 jobs were slashed in a reorganization.
Meanwhile, average house prices on the tony Massachusetts island — the summer playground of Bill Belichick, John Kerry, Dave Portnoy, Tommy Hilfiger and many others — sits at around $4 million, while the priciest homes go for north of $30 million.
She co-hosted the breakfast broadcast with Don Lemon and Poppy Harlow, but exited shortly before the whole program was scrapped after a tumultuous run when Thompson took over.
She launched “The Source” in July 2023 with some ratings success, but the show has also struggled at times.
