More Hope Hicks Woes & MSNBC Blues

Good morning,

Happy Saturday and welcome back to The Backstory.

It was another incredible week at Puck—Tina Nguyen reported on how Trump has scorned his old pals Hope Hicks & Co.; Dylan Byers broke the news on CNN’s new talent fetish and MSNBC’s Maddow problem; Teddy Schleifer explained why MacKenzie Scott is vexing the right; and William D. Cohan presaged life inside the Twitter board’s panic room. And, of course, Julia Ioffe dissected the latest horrors in Ukraine.

Check out these stories, along with the rest of our best work from the week, via the links below. And stick around, too, for the backstory on how it all came together.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni reveals the legal headache everyone in town is fretting about.
and…
Julia Alexander explicates David Zaslav’s biggest I.P. challenge.

WALL STREET:
William D. Cohan goes inside the Twitter board’s panic room.
and…
Eriq Gardner reveals Elon Musk’s own legal woes, past and present.

WASHINGTON:
Tina Nguyen explains why Trump slighted Hope Hicks in Pennsylvania.
and…
Julia Ioffe reports on life and death and the inbetween in Kyiv.

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer details the G.O.P.’s existential dread over MacKenzie Scott.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers has all the dish on CNN+ and MSNBC.

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.

The Rainmakers

You don’t need me to tell you that the culture is changing, and fast, but here goes. At the beginning of the pandemic, Netflix seemed to be on an ascendant arc toward world streaming domination, Peloton was on the warpath to take over white-collar humanity, Bob Iger was handing over the keys to his successor at Disney, Apple was just getting started in video streaming, and Twitter was, among other things, the underperforming publicly-traded province of revolting trolls, far-right politicians, and status-obsessed journalists.

Two years later, Netflix has lost some 40 percent of its market valuation as the streaming market swells with fearsome competitors, and Peloton has lost around twice that much. Meanwhile, Iger’s successor is already on the ropes, Jason Kilarian-proof that E.Q. is as important as I.Q for a media C.E.O. Apple has an Oscar (if anyone can even remember). And Twitter, while still home to many of those same constituents, appears headed to the woodshed in one of the more vexing hostile takeovers in memory, the sort of massively humiliating affair that makes Ronald Perelman’s conquest of Revlon seem like tame Saturday afternoon programming by comparison.

Back in the fall, Mark Zuckerberg waxed quixotic about a future decade when our web3/metaverse fantasia would take hold. If that is even remotely the endstate we’re veering towards, the future will be even more chaotic than the past. What’s that famous line from The Sun Also Rises, that change happens slowly and then all at once? We’re seeing it before our very eyes.

This transformation is the core story of our time. And it’s our obsession at Puck, which aims to be the biography of our age, a day at a time. One of the least appreciated elements of this groundshift, however, is the very terra firma upon which it takes place. Yes, I’m talking about the lawyers who draft the terms that fuel the change.

This may sound absurd, but it’s not. All the upheaval of industrial progress is shaped and litigated via term sheets, in legal filings, in motions, the long form, or at trial, one way or the other. And, in many ways, it’s the enterprising and ambitious (and sometimes wily) lawyers who quietly shape the biggest decisions, or strategize the leaks, or cover the asses of the blundering executives. As someone who has spent the better part of two decades in the journalism trade, with a hiatus in private equity, I can tell you assuredly that no one knows better what the hell is really going on than the lawyers on the deal. They’re the ones you always want to be talking to.

This is one reason why, back in January, we were proud to bring aboard Eriq Gardner as a Puck founding partner focused on the underbelly of the legal world—who was suing whom, who was pondering suing whom, what was at stake, which rights were coming up, what was going to get resolved, and what wasn’t. Eriq is the country’s foremost expert on the inside story in entertainment and media law. And every Monday, he’ll be publishing The Rainmaker, a new private email focused on the biggest, juiciest issues on the biggest legal stage.

In the three months he’s been at Puck, Eriq has already broken tons of stories, and demonstrated the various ways that legal world can shape our culture—whether it has to do with Eminem being allowed to kneel at the Super Bowl, the latest twist in the Bill Cosby trial, Chris Cuomo’s $125 million strategy, or Les Moonves settling his litigation with CBS. Eriq is the Walter Winchell of the bar—knows everyone, hears everything, and has that rare ability to synthesize the most sophisticated filings in the most elegant ways. And the guy knows everything. He’ll know you’re being sued before you do.

Eriq’s great work is a reflection of what we’re trying to do here at Puck—bringing you into the inner circle at the nexus of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street with more proximity than ever before to the deals, decisionmakers, the strategy and dish. The Rainmaker will make you feel like you’re truly in the room where it happens, and before anyone else knows what’s going on. It will provide, among other things, a true roadmap to the way our culture is evolving, perhaps providing some solace that we know what we’re doing, after all.

Have a great weekend,
Jon

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