Popular DC dinner names Pres. Trump roaster

THE White House Correspondents’ Association on Tuesday tapped the comedian Hasan Minhaj from Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” to host the annual dinner on April 29 — the first one in 36 years without a sitting president in attendance.

“I was not looking for somebody who is going to roast the president in absentia,” said Jeff Mason, a Reuters correspondent and president of the association, said during a Tuesday morning appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show.

But Minhaj, who in the past has ripped President Trump as a “racist Cheeto,” does not appear to be prepared to hold back, tweeting on Tuesday, in classic Trump style, “It is a tremendous honor to be a part of such a historic event even though the president has chosen not to attend this year. SAD!”

Trump became the first president since Ronald Regan in 1981 to skip the dinner where politicians, journalists and celebrities typically dine and trade good-natured barbs.

[Regan was recovering from an assassination attempt a few weeks earlier but phoned in to the dinner with a few jokes].

The Trump administration has labeled the media the “opposition party” and said he was boycotting the event because he did not want to pretend he was friendly with the media even for a day.

Many celebrities are staying away. The New Yorker, Mike Bloomberg’s Bloomberg LP, Vanity Fair and Time/People all canceled their pre- or post-event parties.

CNN, MSNBC/NBC and Reuters are still tossing bashes at the event.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of Watergate-era fame will also speak out and hand out the journalism awards, which are the ostensible reason for the dinner.

Time watch

As rumors swirl about whether a deal can finally get done at Time Inc., Wall Street seems to be growing a little restless as it waits for the country’s biggest publisher to say deal or no deal.

“Time management will have hell to pay if they don’t get a deal done with so many parties interested,” warned one large shareholder.

Talks are underway with “multiple parties,” sources close to the situation continue to say.

“A deal should take place at $20 [a share] or above,” said the large shareholder. “Without a deal, it trades at $15.”

Meanwhile, a new consensus price from seven analysts who follow Time Inc. stock peg it as a $16.33 stock with a recommendation of “hold” — down from a consensus of $17 a week earlier.

The actual stock closed Tuesday at $18.95 a share, up 30 cents.

Sources continue to believe that Meredith, one of the companies identified as a suitor, remains the favorite to eventually buy the pub- lisher for a price somewhere in the range of $2 billion.

The trio who forced Time Inc. into a sales process, Edgar Bronfman Jr., Len Blavatnik and Ynon Kreiz — known as the “three amigos” — remain on the sideline but are watching closely.

Fashion move

Man of the World, which was an oversized quarterly fashion magazine, is the latest publication to go all digital.

Founder Alan Maleh, who also owns the men’s retail fashion store Gentry NYC, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, said he felt the digital quarterly could expand far beyond the 30,000 subscribers who were getting the print version. He wants to turn it into a daily site with a strong e-commerce component.

“I want to create a community where men can go to get the latest information on fashion, travel and lifestyle, and I just felt digital was the way to go,” said Maleh.

As a result, Christopher Tennant, the person who was editing the quarterly print version that last appeared in the fall of 2016, is out, and the job of overseeing the Web product has been taken over by creative director Owen Bell.

Empty house

The Pulitzer Prizes were handed out on Monday.

The Daily News shared the award for Public Service with the not-for-profit journalism site Pro-Publica. But in a rarity, Jim Rich, the editor-in-chief who oversaw the series, had already been booted from the embattled paper months earlier. His name was omitted from the company’s announcement about the award, but Rich did turn up in the newsroom to stand side by side with the man who replaced him, Arthur Browne. The main writer of the series, Sarah Ryley, was also there for the photo op, even though she had already told the News she was quitting to join the not-for-profit investigative site, The Trace.