Elizabeth Wagmeister on the Diddy Trial, and Hard News on the Entertainment Beat

Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.

In November 2023, Elizabeth Wagmeister was at an airport in Singapore, en route to her honeymoon in Bali, when she got a call from a source who said they had a big story for her. A couple of hours later, the news broke that Sean “Diddy” Combs was being accused by an ex-girlfriend of rape, physical abuse, and sex trafficking. Wagmeister had nowhere to report the news; she had recently left a role at Variety, where she covered Harvey Weinstein and helped break the story of the sexual harassment allegations against Matt Lauer, and hadn’t yet started her next job, as an entertainment reporter with celebrity.land. “It ruined the first three days of my honeymoon,” she said. “I just knew that this story was going to be different than anything else.” 

In the end, it didn’t matter that Wagmeister had to sit that one out, because the saga of Combs’s journey through the legal system was only getting started. Nearly two years on, Combs, one of the most famous and powerful music producers alive, has faced more than seventy lawsuits from ex-girlfriends, former romantic partners, and employees, among others, and has been convicted on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. (He was acquitted on the most serious charges, including racketeering and sex trafficking; he pleaded not guilty to all the charges.) Wagmeister broke the news of the existence of a surveillance video showing Combs beating his ex-girlfriend, and was the first to report that a federal grand jury would hear from Combs’s accusers. She covered his trial in court and plans to return to New York later this week, when Combs is scheduled to be sentenced. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

LS: Combs’s sentencing will close the loop on a massive story on your beat. What was it like covering the trial?

EW: I’ve covered many high-profile stories; I had never seen anything like this. You had journalists from around the world coming to New York City to be in that courtroom. When you arrived at the courthouse, you had already had a day because of just getting in there and getting through all the chaos. But aside from that, the amount of work was enormous. I would be sitting in the courtroom—or some days in the overflow room—and you can’t have a computer or your phone, so you’re just taking notes with a pen and paper. You’re observing. You’re digesting everything. And then I would have hits lined up throughout the day, so I would run out of the courthouse five to ten times per day to go live on air. 

I was on with Laura Coates most nights during the 11pm hour. She was my partner in crime throughout this trial. We would sit in court together. We broke the verdict live on air together, and we would do her show most nights at 11pm. So if you do the math, that means we’re not off set until midnight. There wasn’t a lot of sleep involved. I was waking up anywhere between 4:30 to 6am, and I was going to bed most nights at 1:30 or 2. I was pregnant, and nobody knew. I was in my first trimester the entire Diddy trial, and I had not told my bosses. I had not told anyone.

A lot of the analysis of the trial has focused on the fact that Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges, and therefore the prosecution was a failure. Is that how you see it? 

My role as an entertainment journalist is to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. This is one of the most powerful figures to ever exist in the world of Hollywood, media, entertainment, business, fashion, and he not only had to stand a criminal trial, but he is sitting in the MDC [Metropolitan Detention Center] in Brooklyn. He will not spend the rest of his life behind bars, but when you are Sean Combs and you’re used to living in mansions and partying on yachts, one day in jail is a lot—not to mention one year or two years or three years. 

You also have to look beyond the criminal proceedings. You also have to look at what his life is and what Sean Combs is in society and what his career is. All of the dirty laundry has been aired in open court, and the world has heard it, and they can’t unhear that. It’s hard to reconcile the old Sean Combs with what we know now. Can Sean Combs still have a career? Does he exist in Hollywood anymore?

You also reported on the victims and their experiences. What did you take away from that part of the process?

Something that I hear often when I talk to someone who alleges that they’ve been sexually harassed or treated poorly in the workplace is that HR didn’t do anything, and law enforcement didn’t do anything, and so journalists become an avenue to seek justice. They want to come forward, but they’re still very scared to come forward. Navigating that isn’t easy, because, first and foremost, you have to gain their trust. You’re usually dealing with trauma victims, so they’re understandably very scared to talk to you. They don’t know you. But having the body of work shows that we are going to treat their story with the due diligence it deserves. The more work you do, the more that you can showcase all the reasons why they should consider speaking out.

I feel like a lot of people assume the entertainment beat means you’re just covering awards shows, but it can be a lot more than that.

As society has evolved, the entertainment beat needed to evolve as well. Entertainment news, historically, had a bad rap, and now it is taken more seriously. If you don’t take it seriously, I don’t think audiences are interested. I am a journalist with a capital J, but entertainment happens to be my beat, just like politics happens to be someone else’s beat. I’ve been so grateful to cover some of the most impactful stories of the MeToo movement. It impacted so many different industries around the world. That was really a time when, all of a sudden, entertainment journalists were tasked with doing hard news. With all those stories throughout the MeToo movement, if you take out the central figure, who happened to be a celebrity, it’s really hard-hitting news and investigative reporting. It just happens to deal with an entertainment figure.