News

It is no surprise that Tyler Perry's Madea has created such a complex and seemingly never-ending family tree for itself, but luckily, there is a method to the madness. In 2005, Tyler Perry wrote the first Madea movie, Diary of a Mad Black Woman. It tells the story of a young black woman who seeks refuge at her eccentric grandmother's house after suffering from a bad break-up. Since then, the Madea cinematic universe has spawned twelve more movies, various plays, television series, and a book. At that time, Madea's family tree was filled with countless cousins, nieces, and nephews.

At the center of this convoluted family tree, of course, is Madea. Mabel Earlene Simmons, better known as Madea, is a rough-and-tumble senior citizen with some criminal tendencies but a massive soft spot for her family. For almost two decades, she has been portrayed on-screen by actor Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry's...

Jen Faison thought she had found her happy ending with her college sweetheart, a beloved high school teacher named Spencer Herron.

However, their seemingly perfect life implodes one spring afternoon when Faison discovers that behind her fairytale romance was a web of lies, affairs and criminal sexual assault.

This story was first unveiled as a podcast by Glass Podcasts in partnership with iHeartPodcasts and it’s now been turned into a true-crime documentary series for Hulu.

Watch the trailer above.

Betrayal: The Perfect Husband features interviews with multiple women who say they were involved with Herron and the one student who put an end to the twisted teacher’s reign of sexual improprieties.

The three-part series is produced by Glass Entertainment and ABC News Studios. Nancy Glass and Jon Hirsch are executive producers for Glass Entertainment, David Sloan is senior executive producer for ABC News Studios, Wendy Krantz is senior producer,...

ABC News Studios has announced its summer slate of true crime docuseries, including an exploration of the rise and fall of scandalous dating site Ashley Madison.

The four series — “The Ashley Madison Affair,” “Betrayal: The Perfect Husband,” “Mother Undercover” and “Demons and Saviors” — will premiere throughout July and August, with each featuring multiple parts.

Read more about ABC News Studios’ summer docuseries below.

“The Ashley Madison Affair”

Friday, July 7

The docuseries will explore the dating platform Ashley Madison and its marketing tactics to recruit members to partake in extramarital affairs. As the platform gained attention, a group of hackers known as The Impact Team hacked into the site and caused a catastrophic data breach. Jeremy Dear, Fred Hepburn, David Sloan and Beth Hoppe serve as executive producers.

“Betrayal: The Perfect Husband”

Tuesday, July 11

Based on the “Betrayal” podcast, the upcoming docuseries will chronicle how one woman discovered that her husband,...

The New York Times site has gone down for the second time in as many weeks, with a spokeswoman for the Gray Lady saying a "malicious external attack" could be responsible for the outage. Also read: The NY Times Isn't Selling - 6 Newspapers That Should "The site is down for some," Eileen Murphy, vice president of corporate communication at the paper, told TheWrap in an email. "We are working to fix the problem.  Our initial assessment is that this is most likely the result of a malicious external attack." Access to...

Second update, 11:07 a.m.: Nyt spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told TheWrap: "The outage occurred within seconds of a scheduled maintenance update, which we believe was the cause. The site is back up in most places and we are working on full restoration." Update, 10:06 a.m.: After over an hour, NYTimes.com is back up and running. Original post: "All the news that's fit to print" is going to have to stay in print -- for a bit, anyway. The website of the New York Times was down for a significant chunk of time Wednesday morning. Visitors...

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal lifted paywalls on their sites on Monday for readers seeking updates on Hurricane Sandy. Readers now have open-access to the full sites. Newsday, a Long Island-based tabloid, also removed its paywall. The Journal tweeted last night that the free ride on its site would be available throughout the day on Monday. New York Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told TheWrap that the newspaper took down the paywall at 3 p.m. Edt on Sunday and said it would remain that way for the "duration of the...

The New York Times offered 8.6 million of its readers a half-price discount for 16 weeks in an email gaffe. The newspaper had intended to make the offer to around 300 people who had recently cancelled their subscriptions, but instead sent out the message to the much larger list, The AP reports. When the error was discovered, a message was posted on the New York Times Twitter feed which read: "If you received an email today about canceling your Nyt subscription, ignore it. It's not from us." However, spokeswoman Eileen Murphy later revealed that the original email was genuine and sent out in error. "This (more)...

What makes a crowdsourcing solicitation fall flat on its face?

This afternoon the State of Alaska will release some 24,000 of Sarah Palin's emails, covering a good deal of her gubernatorial reign. Though the New York Times, along with pretty much every other publication in the free world, has sent reporters (an unspecified number, but likely fewer than 24,000) to Juneau, it recognizes that the trove it's facing down is a mighty one. So it posted on its politics blog, The Caucus, yesterday, asking if readers might "help us idenfity interesting and newsworthy e-mails, people and events that we may want to highlight."

Crowdsourcing! Citizen journalism! You've heard of it, right? It's the wave of the future. (Or is it?) The New York Times, that bastion of journalistic traditionalism, surely thought it was dipping a toe into the zeitgeist, and that its readers would be delighted. It thought wrong. And so did others,...

Following the world-altering news that Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday night, New York Times vice president of corporate communications Eileen Murphy had to do something you only see in the movies. "The news broke really late, and by that time we were already in the middle of the printing run," she told FishbowlNY. "ecause of the magnitude of the news, the order was given to stop the presses." If that kind of newsroom story makes your heart race, you're going to want to check out the trailer for Page One: Inside the 'New York Times....

The New York Times often covers Shell Oil's misdeeds and questionable choices, which in past years have included drilling in the arctic and denying human rights abuses in Nigeria. The oil industry is undeniably contentious and filled with scandals and coverups--all the more reason for the Times to write about it. But how can the Times remain objective when it is partnering with Shell Oil on an energy conference?

Shell is teaming up with the Times (as a media partner) for its 2011 Energy Summit next month in Houston, Texas. The summit will reportedly feature a keynote address from Bill Richardson, the former Governor of New Mexico, as well as an "intimate conversation" with former Times columnist Frank Rich and an inside look at Shell's Eco-Marathon, which challenges high school and college students to build energy-efficient vehicles.

Climate Progress got its hands on a copy of an invitation to the "symposium for 50 leaders from government,...