WILL IT BE TWITTER TRUMP OR TELEPROMPTER TRUMP at tonight’s State of the Union address? It’s likely to be the latter, reports POLITICO’s Anita Kumar, as President Donald Trump “has taken a strikingly traditional approach to that most presidential of rituals — speaking to Congress.”

— “In each of the past two years, Trump has delivered a lofty, optimistic annual message on Capitol Hill, reading dutifully from a Teleprompter and setting aside his personal insults, attacks on the media, even his rambling boasts,” she writes.

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— And Trump "spent time on Monday practicing in the Map Room with a handful of senior administration officials," the New York Times's Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni report. "He was expected to do another teleprompter-and-lectern practice session there on Tuesday, with his aides giving him notes."

— Whether or not Trump sticks to the script, the major networks will be there with special coverage. The lead anchors for the broadcast networks will be Lester Holt, Savannah Guthrie, and Chuck Todd (NBC), George Stephanopoulos (ABC), Jeff Glor (CBS), Shepard Smith (Fox), and Judy Woodruff (PBS).

— On cable, it’s Rachel Maddow and Brian Williams, (MSNBC), Anderson Cooper, Wolf Blitzer, Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Chris Cuomo (CNN), Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum (Fox News), Neil Cavuto (Fox Business), and Greta Brawner and Steve Scully (C-SPAN).

GOOD MORNING AND WELCOME TO MORNING MEDIA: The AP notes that "Trump’s State of the Union speech a year ago wandered from reality" in looking ahead at tonight's address. Daniel Lippman ([email protected]/ @dlippman) contributed to the newsletter. Subscribe. Archives.

FIRST IN MORNING MEDIA: Freelance journalists Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah and Abe Streep have won the American Mosaic Journalism Prize, which honors deep reporting on "underrepresented and/or misrepresented groups in the American landscape.” The award, which includes a $100,000 cash prize, is supported by the Heising-Simons Foundation.

— Ghansah, a journalist and critic, also won a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award last year for her GQ profile of racist mass shooter Dylann Roof. Streep, a contributing editor to Outside and contributing writer at The California Sunday Magazine, was recognized for reporting on a high school basketball team on a Montana Indian Reservation and a Syrian refugee family in the state.

WHY WAPO DIDN’T RUN SEXUAL ASSAULT CLAIM AGAINST LT. GOV: Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s office denied a sexual assault allegation published in Big League Politics — the same pro-Trump site that broke Gov. Ralph Northam’s racist yearbook photo — and noted that the Washington Post had “carefully investigated the claim for several months” before declining to publish a story.

— The Post’s Theresa Vargas acknowledges in a story on Fairfax’s denial that a woman approached the paper more than a year ago. “The Washington Post, in phone calls to people who knew Fairfax from college, law school and through political circles, found no similar complaints of sexual misconduct against him,” she writes. “Without that, or the ability to corroborate the woman’s account — in part because she had not told anyone what happened — The Washington Post did not run a story.”

— At a Monday press conference, Fairfax asked, “Does anybody think it's any coincidence that on the eve of potentially my being elevated that that's when this uncorroborated smear comes out? Does anybody believe that's a coincidence?"

AS JOHN OLIVER PREPARES for the sixth season of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” on Feb. 17, the host described the challenge his writers face in addressing topics that appear like “kryptonite to the concept of laughter” — last season wrapped up with “Authoritarianism” — and yet having to add humor in a way that enhances the story without appearing glib.

— “It feels like an episode of ‘Chopped’ where you empty a sack of broken glass, used needles, condoms and elemental sense of sadness,” Oliver told reporters over breakfast Monday at HBO’s offices. “I would like something that tastes delicious from this.”

— “Last Week Tonight” has stood out amid the TV news cycle churn in spending around 20 minutes on a single story. Oliver said the goal is to decide “what single droplets of the firehose that is being projected at you every week are worth slowing down and talking about.” And Oliver noted that he has the advantage of revisiting stories, like “Family Separation,” several months after they faded from the headlines.

— “The difficult thing that has ended up being a positive is we’re late to everything,” he said. “The way that it is now, everybody’s late to everything. You can be on every day and you’re technically late because something that happened this morning seems like a long time ago and has already been joked about a lot online. So everybody’s late. We’re just really late.”

TOP GITMO REPORTER MAY LEAVE: The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple reports that the Miami Herald’s Carol Rosenberg, who has covered Guantanamo Bay more exhaustively than anyone, was one of 450 employees who received a voluntary early retirement offer from Herald owner McClatchy. Mark Seibel, a former editor, told Wemple: “There’s no one in the United States that knows more about Gitmo than Carol Rosenberg.”

— “Literally no one — not any of the officials who oversee Guantanamo or anyone who serves in the detentions/tribunals chains of command — knows more about Guantanamo than Carol,” tweeted The Daily Beast’s Spencer Ackerman. “They cycle out, she stays. You will also never meet a more collegial reporter.”

GANNETT REJECTS TAKEOVER BID: Gannett journalists are surely relieved that the company rejected a takeover bid from hedge fund-backed Digital First Media, an organization known for gutting newspapers nationwide. USA Today’s Philana Patterson reports that Gannett’s board “unanimously rejected” the unsolicited offer, “saying the proposal undervalues the company and the board doesn’t believe the offer is credible.”

MONTANA DEMS PUSH JOURNALIST ASSAULT BILL: POLITICO’s Alex Thompson reports from Helena that “Democrats in the Montana state legislature put forward a bill Monday that would increase the penalty for assaulting a journalist from $500 to a maximum of $5,000 and up to a year in jail — a none-too-subtle slap at Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte and his infamous body slam of a reporter two years ago.”

NBC’S HOLT APPLAUDS WAPO SUPER BOWL AD: “NBC Nightly News” anchor Lester Holt called the Washington Post’s Super Bowl ad “an important statement” when speaking yesterday the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities’ annual meeting in Washington. “We have to remind people of what we do and why we do it," Holt said.

Revolving Door

Remy Stern, who served as chief digital officer of the New York Post and Post Digital Network, is leaving after six years with the company. It’s the second high-profile departure at the Post in recent weeks, with publisher and CEO Jesse Angelo also departing.

Helen Coster, most recently a senior editor on Reuters’ Commentary team, is joining the media and telecoms team as media correspondent. Coster will write "focus on how technology is transforming the media and entertainment industries.”

Jacqui Cheng, most recently editor-in-chief of Wirecutter, is joining all-classical music station WQXR as its first editor-in-chief, music.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs, most recently covering New York City law enforcement for the Wall Street Journal, is joining the New York Times as Homeland Security correspondent and will be based in Washington.

Alexandra Jaffe, most recently at “Vice News Tonight,” is joining the Associated Press as a political reporter based in Iowa. Hunter Woodall, most recently at the Kansas City Star, joins the AP as a political reporter based in New Hampshire.

Emily Singer, most recently a senior political reporter at Mic, is joining Shareblue as a senior writer.

Kelly Cohen, who spent six years at the Washington Examiner, most recently covering federal law enforcement and justice, has left the publication. She’s looking for new opportunities.

Gigi Sukin has started as associate editor of news at Axios. She previously was digital editor at ColoradoBiz magazine.

Kendall Breitman, currently a segment producer for MSNBC’s “Kasie DC,” is leaving the network and moving in March to Tel Aviv to pursue either writing or documentary producing. She is a Bloomberg Politics and POLITICO alumni.

Ray Hernandez, a former longtime New York Times reporter who most recently worked at DCI Group, and Yochi Dreazen, former deputy managing editor at Vox and a Wall street Journal veteran, are joining Marathon Strategies. (via Playbook)

Extras

— The Super Bowl drew 98.2 million viewers to CBS on Sunday, “the smallest television audience since 2008,” reports the New York Times’s Kevin Draper.

— The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch writes how Super Bowl broadcasters Tony Romo and Jim Nantz “did their best to liven up a slogfest.”

— Meanwhile, Dana Perino's queso went viral during the game. The Fox News host defended the dip on Monday, notes People's Jessica Fecteau.

— CNN has cut ties with pro-Trump contributors Jack Kingston and André Bauer, according to the Hollywood Reporter’s Jeremy Barr.

— The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan writes that President Trump doesn’t even believe his recurring “fake news” attacks.

— And Eric Boehlert questions on Daily Kos if news organizations just stop interviewing Trump.

Kicker

“And of the legendary Dead Kennedys punk rock ode to him, ‘California Uber Alles,’ he said ‘I think it was a dumb song, really. It didn’t make any sense. The lyrics are particularly lame and incoherent. But I’m proud someone thought I had that much power.’” — New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd tweeting bits of her interview with ex-California Gov. Jerry Brown