Good morning,

Happy Saturday and welcome back to The Backstory. 

Thanks to my remarkable colleagues, it was another incredible week—Julia Ioffe’s searingly insightful reporting on Putin, Eriq Gardner’s exclusive on a confounding legal saga, Dylan Byers’ scoopage on a distinctly MSNBC drama, and Teddy Schleifer’s update on how the Kremlin is impacting Sand Hill Road. Check out some of our very best work, below. And, as always, stick around for the backstory on how it came together.

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WASHINGTON:

Julia Ioffe speaks to Biden’s former top Ukraine advisor.

WALL STREET:

William D. Cohan perceives a private equity play for Shari Redstone’s media empire.

HOLLYWOOD:

Matt Belloni asks whether Bob Chapek can survive his Florida flip-flop.

And…

Eriq Gardner has the scoop on CBS’s Les Moonves litigation.

MEDIA:

Eriq also has the inside dish on Chris Cuomo’s $125 million suit.

And…

Dylan Byers has the receipts in Keith Olbermann’s war of words with MSNBC.

SILICON VALLEY:

Teddy Schleifer returns to the Yuri Milner Kremlin-Palo Alto saga.

PODCASTS:

Get the real inside story on the latest episodes of The Powers that Be: Daily, hosted by Peter Hamby. 

And…
Catch up on The Town, Matt Belloni’s new show about what’s really going on in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, I also encourage you to take advantage of our article gifting feature. You can share our work with your colleagues, friends, and family. Subscribers are entitled to 5 article gifts per month.

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Is the Medium the Message?

Years ago, I was having an informal lunch with a legendary editor—a descendant in the pedigree of Leo Lerman, Wallace Shawn, Graydon Carter, Sonny Mehta, Grace Mirabella, Bob Gottleib, Anna Wintour, Art Cooper, and Tina Brown. It was a decidedly unstuffy affair. We were sitting at a cafeteria table in a Manhattan office tower, high above the clouds, munching on over-mayonnaised tuna salad sandwiches, drinking Diet Cokes, and just having a ball, with no one lurching over to take a peek at the clock, or sneak a look at the emails percolating on their Apple Watch. 

One of the reasons I got into this business is because editing is an apprenticeship job. Too many of the instincts and soft arts are unteachable, or at least have to be come by naturally, often with the assistance of a more seasoned veteran. I had no agenda at this lunch other than to be an enjoyable conversation partner and sop up some wisdom between bites.

Midway through, this editor made one of those effortlessly wise observations in passing—one that simply rolled through the conveyor belt of his mind without second thought, but which I’ve reconsidered ceaselessly ever since. The whole genesis of the magazine industry, a century or so prior, he said, was a response to the unpleasantness of the day’s newspaper writing. At the time, the local newspaper wars competed via muckraking journalism, to be sure, but also through screaming headlines and an enduring focus on often salacious, race-to-the-bottom storylines—the poop cruises and viral exploding watermelon stunts of their day. Plus, they were printed on ink-smeared paper and hawked from corner to corner.

Magazines provided both a much needed format innovation—longer, more carefully plotted and elegantly composed features—and also the counterpoint of a far more curated editorial ecosystem. Magazines weren’t meant to replace the firmament of the daily news hustle; instead, they complemented it. 

Over time, this transition led to a new age of special interest titles, including the earliest iterations of legendary institutions, like Vanity Fair. Magazines, in many ways, were among the first true, meaningful brands in our culture, and a perfect technology for a time.

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I’ve been thinking about that conversation more than ever, of late, given the transformation that we now find our culture undergoing. So much of the digital business  is dominated by the obvious storylines—the replatforming that we see as streaming video wrests market share from linear TV and movie theaters; as podcasts unmoor society’s reliance on radio; as direct-to-consumer companies, from apparel to mattresses, take aim at the consumer packaged goods companies that we all grew up with. As crypto and DeFi try to offer a new monetary system. As we brace for a future, god forbid, when we really have to see our faces in the metaverse, a dystopia that makes Zoom seem like a pleasant alternative.

Often forgotten in the transformation is the detail my lunch companion effortlessly mentioned that afternoon—the format innovation. Indeed, some of the most successful media businesses of our day, like Axios, are premised on the notion that people want to consume quality content in a new manner. Netflix’s greatest invention, after all, wasn’t its streaming technology but the very concept of the full-season drop. (Companies like Quibi, too, prove that getting it right isn’t as easy as it often looks.)

At Puck, we’re firm believers that the magazine arts are returning for the mobile age. But we’re also believers that those arts will be manifested differently. Around here, we’re deliberate about making sure that our journalism is as refined, thoughtful, and eloquent as anything you’d ever expect on a sheet of glossy paper during the height of the magazine era—but we’re also careful to recognize that you’re likely reading (or listening) to our work on your smartphone. 

Likewise, we also recognize that any seasoned reader wants to know not simply the story, but the story behind the story, and have a line into the creator who has dedicated hours, if not weeks, of their life preparing it. That’s why we offer everyone in Puck’s community the ability to sign up for our work delivered directly to your inbox—whether it’s the private emails of individual authors, our Daily Courant, or this weekly touch-base product. 

My notes to you, every Saturday morning, are an attempt at one extra layer of transparency. After all, we’re not only creating journalism at Puck. We’re standing up a new kind of media company in front of your very eyes. As we move from one era of the open web to a new community-based generation, it’s imperative that we create a more elevated, curated, and unique experience. I hope that is what you’ll find here.

To wit, I want to call your attention to the recent work of founding partner Eriq Gardner, who is the most prolific and respected reporter on the legal beat. Eriq’s extraordinary talent at unearthing litigation, explaining legal strategy, and not shying from the dish sets him above his peers. He’s also currently working on a new format innovation in which he breaks down the backstory behind some of the biggest cases of the day (Cuomo v. CNN; Smartmatic v. Fox) along with a grab bag of other scintillating topics, such as the NFL’s latest legal developments. If you’re a lawyer, or you just devour Law & Order, you’ll love what Eriq is up to. And you’ll appreciate how he’s packing a half dozen magazine articles’ worth of value into one mobile-friendly piece. Check out his latest here. Hopefully it is yet another example of the sort of work you can only get at Puck.

Have a great weekend,

Jon