Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, your Saturday review of the best of Puck.

It was another incredible week! Matt Belloni assessed Leo DiCaprio’s box office mojo and considered the Ellison plan for WBD; Kim Masters tackled the Sony Pictures succession drama; Eriq Gardner unpacked a David Zaslav suit; Julia Alexander crunched the numbers on the NFL’s YouTube debut; Dylan Byers evaluated the Murdoch trust resolution; Bill Cohan detailed various Wall Street M&A fantasies; John Ourand surveyed the NBA’s strange new bedfellows; Lauren Sherman investigated the Nike-Skims deal; Sarah Shapiro previewed a D.T.C. evolution; Rachel Strugatz profiled the facelift king of New York; Marion Maneker took stock of the latest sotto voce mood in the art market; Julie Davich uncorked some Bordeauxmania; and Ian Krietzberg marveled over Sam Altman’s startling cash burn.

Meanwhile, Leigh Ann Caldwell documented Ezra Klein’s takeover of Hill Democrats’ mental real estate; Abby Livingston pondered the Dem establishment’s Mamdani endorsement crisis; Julia Ioffe interpreted Putin’s latest NATO provocation; and John Heilemann analyzed the G.O.P.’s late-stage Epstein-itis.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

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Embark on a journey – literal, metaphorical, and undeniably poetic.

Discover the new Montblanc collection.

Lauren Sherman chronicles the dawn of the Luca de Meo era at Kering and runs through the latest twists in Massenetgate.
and…
Rachel Strugatz spotlights Dr. Steve Levine, he of the $300,000 facelift.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro charts Buck Mason’s expansion into womenswear.

Marion Maneker offers a realist’s guide to the market and reviews the new Man Ray show.
and…
Julie Davich samples a major Rothschild wine sale.

Matt Belloni runs the numbers on Leo’s star power and measures the Paramount-WBD deal heat.
meanwhile…
Eriq Gardner details Zaz’s latest legal thriller.
and…
Kim Masters illuminates the Tom Rothman succession plot twists.

Ian Krietzberg scrutinizes Sam Altman’s stunning cash incineration plan.

Dylan Byers weighs in on the Murdochs’ stunning settlement.
and…
Julia Alexander translates the YouTube-NFL numbers.
meanwhile…
John Ourand explains the NBA’s new plural marriage philosophy.

Bill Cohan relays a wave of banker M&A fantasies.

Leigh Ann Caldwell studies Ezra Klein’s influence on the Democratic Party.
and…
Abby Livingston decodes the Dem leadership’s Mamdani endorsement crisis.
and…
John Heilemann and Leigh Ann trade notes on the latest Epstein developments.
meanwhile…
Julia Ioffe sorts through the fallout from Putin’s Poland incursion.

Dylan and Julia Alexander chew over Rupert’s last rodeo on The Grill Room.
and…
Ourand and Pablo Torre dissect the evolution of sports media on The Varsity.
and…
Lauren skims through The Preppy Handbook with Libby Wadle, C.E.O. of J.Crew Group, on Fashion People.
and…
Heilemann laments the Charlie Kirk crisis on Impolitic.
and…
Matt and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw dig into the Wizard of Oz phenomenon on The Town.
and…
Eriq and Peter break down Anthropic’s epic $1.5 billion settlement on The Powers That Be.

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Four years ago, on this very day, I was sitting at a rustic wooden table in a lovely garden floor apartment in the West Village when my partners clicked a final button and Puck was officially introduced to the world. In many ways, we’d been building the company out in the open for months. Starting in May of 2021, my partner Matt Belloni launched the original version of What I’m Hearing, his trailblazing private email, to instantaneous product-market fit. Julia Ioffe, Peter Hamby, and Bill Cohan, among others, followed soon thereafter with their own phenomenal and genre-defining work. And while our fledgling startup had attracted a surprising amount of media curiosity, it was still a renegade operation. For instance, we didn’t even have a name.

That all changed on September 13, 2021, when Puck was formally unveiled to the world—the name, a website, our official branding, the upgrading of our private emails, and so much else, including our subscription offering. That morning, my partners and I sat around that wooden table and watched as our first fleet of subscribers signed up, one by one… by one. Occasionally there was the thrill of an influential executive, banker, television agent, or member of Congress—often mixed in with family members, curious pals from high school, LinkedIn buddies, frenemies, and more.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Embark on a journey – literal, metaphorical, and undeniably poetic.

Discover the new Montblanc collection.

In the early evening, we decamped for a celebratory toast at Bobo, right on the corner of Seventh Avenue and 10th Street—a sentimentalish place, even for me. I’d grown up in the area, gone to grade school mere blocks away, and remembered eating dinner many nights at the Riviera, the long-defunct sports bar that anchored that triangular block, during my childhood. But I hardly needed a drink. I was already in a blissful stupor.

Startups are businesses, obviously, but they’re also invariably life-altering experiences. Frustrated by a media landscape that underserved both its customers and creators, my partners and I decided not to give up on our options but rather attempt to build something better, and that day marked the start of the journey.

Four years in, Puck resembles and reflects their extraordinary work and sacrifice and vision in countless and inimitable ways. And like so many elements of life, success is hardly inevitable and almost always directly correlated to the input of effort and risk. That evening, I remember one of my colleagues asking me if this first day had been all that I had expected. I ruminated on the question for a moment, hoping to offer more than a rote answer or some extemporized mumbo jumbo. The truth, actually, was that I wasn’t so surprised by our early embrace.

The company, even in its infancy, was already stocked with the leading journalistic voices of our era, brilliant operators who refused to blindly follow old paradigms, and investors who wanted us to not only create a cultural product that people loved, but also build it atop a business model that itself would help transform the industry. In dreams begin responsibilities…

As Puck celebrates its fourth anniversary, we’re offering a limited-time discount for new subscribers, who can sign up here. As always, we endeavor to offer insightful, prescient, delectable, fact-heavy, and mirth-filled work you simply can’t find anywhere else, brought to you directly by my peerless partners.

It’s been a heavy news week, of course. Matt offered a treatise on the potential Ellison–Warner Bros. Discovery deal, Dylan Byers rifled through the Murdoch trust, and my partners in D.C. captured the aftershocks of the Charlie Kirk tragedy. But if you’re looking for something a little lighter on this late late summer weekend, I have something in mind for you.

In Get Me Dr. Levine!, our extraordinary beauty industry bard, Rachel Strugatz, chronicled the ascent of Dr. Steve Levine, the plastic surgeon to the stars, who recently reached single-name fame status by doing Kris Jenner’s latest tune-up. Swing by the Madison Avenue Sant Ambroeus on a given weekday, and you’ll see his work on ubiquitous display. His clients, his $300,000 price tag, and soaring success speak as much to the evolution of the beauty industry as they do the bewildering transformation of our culture. It’s one of the great stories of our time, and precisely what you should expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon

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