NYT Drama, Elon’s Mess, “General Armageddon”

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Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory—our weekly digest of the most fabulous work being produced at Puck.

I know I say this all the time, but it really was another great week here at Puck: Dylan Byers captured the talent drama inside the Times; Julia Ioffe revealed the “General Armageddon” who is calling the shots in Putin’s war; Teddy Schleifer reported on a post-Pelosi wild card; Eriq Gardner broke the news on Bill Murray’s lawsuit; Matt Belloni captured the real Nikki Finke; Bill Cohan presaged Elon Musk’s next mess; and Tara Palmeri got to the bottom of Tim Scott’s shadow 2024 campaign.

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

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WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan finds the $13 billion dynamite stick in Elon Musk’s deal.

WASHINGTON:
Tara Palmeri unearths Nikki Haley’s 2024 aspirations.
and…
Tina Nguyen chronicles the demise of Truth Social.
and and…
Julia Ioffe reveals the identity of “General Armageddon.”

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer has the latest dish on the billionaire Suns sweepstakes.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni grapples with Nikki Finke’s legacy.
and…
Julia Alexander assesses Peacock’s future.
and and…
Eriq Gardner breaks the news on Bill Murray’s scandal.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers reports on the latest drama at The New York Times.

PODCASTS:
Peter Hamby and I chat about the media’s war against Twitter on The Powers That Be.
and…
Matt and Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw chronicle the sad story of late night comedy on The Town.

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The Times & Our Times

From the very moment that my partners and I started Puck, we aimed to be direct and honest about our intentions: we recognized that elite journalists had become influencers in our economy, and we wanted to build a company that unleashed their many talents to create a superb cultural product upon an innovative business model that fairly compensated them for their work. As loyal readers of this space know, Puck’s founding partners aren’t just my beloved colleagues, they’re also my business partners, enshrined on our cap table, and incentivized upon success, whether it’s the subscriptions they drive or the events that they host. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

This philosophy inherently recognizes the multi-faceted nature of everyone in our company. We’re journalists, first and foremost, but we’re also shareholders trying to shape a new kind of company in order to help change our industry for the better. Puck’s authors are the modern multi-channel creators: fantastic writers, generationally gifted reporters, expert podcasters, skilled conveners, domain experts and businesspeople. I am convinced that each of those talents informs the other.

When we started this company, we were also intentional about another reality: we wanted to cover our world at an eye-to-eye level. At Puck, we’re not shy about the fact that we often know the people we cover, and we happily eschew some of the stuffier conventions of journalism, like inserting banal and hollow on-the-record quotes just to prove we dropped a call, or marble-mouthed bothsidesism, or vacant euphemisms. You signed up to join this community because you wanted proximity to the real inside story, the plot only the insiders know, and that’s what we’re here to deliver.

As such, sometimes we end up being pretty proximate to our work. Earlier this week, for instance, I began hearing a similar question from media people about the slow exodus of elite talent from The New York Times: first Ben Smith, the exquisitely talented reporter and editor; then the one-and-only Kara Swisher; my homie and best-seller-machine Mark Leibovich; and most recently Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin, hot off their own mega best-seller. What was going on? these people wondered.

Indeed, the Times has never been stronger: under C.E.O. Meredith Kopit Levien, the company is in its most robust financial position in a generation. It’s also never been more influential or acquisitive. (I now enter the app every morning for Wordle before turning to the news.) It has far outpaced the ambitions of its chief rival, The Washington Post, to the point where they are no longer even true competitors, which is quite an accomplishment given that the latter vectors up to a guy named Jeff Bezos. After all, with a portfolio of The Athletic, Serial, Audm, The Wirecutter, Cooking, and all those games, the New York Times Company has become the thinking person’s holding company of tomorrow. So maybe some talent leakage isn’t really more than the price of doing business.

But from our own experiences at Puck, I had the sneaking suspicion that something else was afoot, that these remarkable journalists wanted more creative freedom and financial opportunity—that they, individually, sensed the same sort of market opportunity that we did when we founded Puck. Anyway, as is my everlasting good fortune, I asked my Puck partner Dylan Byers if he was interested in checking it out.

A couple days later, Dylan had talked to a couple dozen people in and around the situation and perfectly captured the nature of the dynamic. I highly recommend that you find time this weekend for Timesism & Its Discontents, which captures the historic institution in its current crossroads—one where journalists are transcending from covering the story to becoming the stories, themselves.

The day after Dylan’s piece was published, I was chatting with one of my closest media pals, a total player with sources on all sides of the Times situation. As we chatted, we both agreed that this talent emigration was constructive; in fact it was a sign of how healthy markets function. For years, our industry suffered from underinvestment, a lack of creativity, and, frankly, it had lost its nerve. Now, a new generation is ready to give it their best shot in order to rewrite the future. It’s the story of our time, and exactly the type of piece you’d find at Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon