Good morning,

It’s Jon Kelly, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Puck, our new media company intently focused on the nexus of Hollywood, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. On behalf of our amazing team of journalists, we appreciate your ongoing support. We hope that you’re enjoying what you’re reading. (Also, check out the latest episode of our podcast, The Powers that Be.) It’s a privilege to stand up this company right in front of you.

Herewith, some of the most memorable work that you might have missed during another incredibly busy week at Puck. And stick around, below the fold, for the backstory on how it came together.

HOLLYWOOD:

Matt Belloni delivers the latest news on Disney’s grim earnings report.

And…

Julia Alexander, the Nate Silver of Hollywood, explains what the company needs to do to solve its subscriber growth challenges.

MEDIA:

Dylan Byers reports on MSNBC’s latest game of musical chairs.

WALL STREET:

Bill Cohan cogently articulates Tesla’s Icarus Syndrome.

SILICON VALLEY:

Teddy Schleifer traces the V.C. network connecting Peter Thiel and Bari Weiss.

WASHINGTON:

Baratunde Thurston explains how we should actually be thinking about critical race theory.

And...

Julia Ioffe reveals the White House calculus for Putin's new proxy war.

On Tuesday evening, after a blessed hour away from my phone, I heard a series of high-pitched pings emanating from the other room—that irresistible harbinger of news coming over the transom. By the time I retrieved my device, though, I quickly realized that I hadn’t missed anything earth-shattering, at least to the wider world. There wasn’t any news on the Biden budget, the head-spinning G.E. split up, or a teaser for the final episode of Impeachment. Instead, media Twitter was in a frenzy about a decidedly lower-wattage affair: Brian Williams had just announced his departure from MSNBC and NBC News, his home for the past three decades. 

Naturally, I started Slacking with Dylan Byers, who was already all over the story. Back in September, after all, Dylan had previewed the news that Williams seemed loose in the saddle. Williams’ own note to his network colleagues was scant on details, but it clearly indicated that, indeed, he wanted to embark on a third act. This gelled with Dylan’s own initial reporting; indeed, he was texting and emailing with sources as we exchanged Slack messages, many of whom believed that Williams would eventually re-emerge somewhere else. But where? And so began my absolute favorite perk of my job: riding shotgun with a reporter as they endeavor to pin down the details of a story. It was late, but Dylan, who lives in L.A., was three hours behind and gathering a head of steam. I couldn’t wait to see what he had in the morning.

I’ll admit that my interest in Williams’ career may have been abnormally piqued. Perhaps that’s on account of two reasons. First, I have long admired how Williams handled his own personal scandal, or his “troubles” as he used to call them, which stemmed from lies he told about about his time covering the Iraq War. These falsehoods bubbled to the surface in 2015, and the reprisals were severe. Williams lost the anchor’s chair at NBC’s Nightly News; his scarlet letter shone brightly.

An ego shot of that size would have leveled many fragile media stars, but Williams took his lumps like a pro, endured his humiliation, and, rather surprisingly, accepted a clear demotion by running the MSNBC breaking news desk. And yet he handled himself with grace and aplomb. From afar, it seemed like Williams believed that this trip to Siberia was part of his gradual renewal, and he turned the humiliation into an opportunity. When he was handed the similarly barren 11 p.m. time slot on MSNBC, Williams seemed relieved to be able to break from the mundane yammer tracks that guided cable during prime time, with all the fatuous “with all due respect…” soliloquies, disingenuous sermonizing,  and talking head pinball. (Julia Ioffe has a fabulous piece unearthing some of most precious greenroom antics.) Instead, Williams reveled in talking with a new crop of wunderkind reporters, like Ashley Parker and Phil Rucker, who were actually at the beating heart of the quotidian Trump saga. His humbled avuncular charm elevated their reportial gifts to new broadcast heights. It all made for great TV.

But I’ll also admit that I was interested in Williams’ career moves for another reason. As I suspected, and as Dylan reported in his excellent piece, The Brian Williams Guessing Game Begins, media insiders assume that Williams will find his new perch on a streaming service. Like Rachel Maddow before him, Williams saw the writing on the wall in his industry: lower ratings, belt-tightening, and frankly, declining creativity. He appears ready to make the jump that consumers have been making for years, cutting the cord with his own career.

Naturally, this reminded me of my own experience in the magazine industry, where the business lagged consumers’ shifting behavior by years, as the economics of the trade similarly lagged the itinerant eyeballs. And the true shift only occurred once the luminaries of the industry left to pursue their third acts by building its new frontier.

I remember having a conversation with a legendary investor, during the earliest days of my Puck journey, wherein we discussed the transformation of what used to be called the magazine business, or what a banker might call affinity-driven brands, and what I call editorial brands that you just absolutely love. At the end of the day, innovation all comes down to business models, this investor told me. The comment surprised me, in large part, because I agreed with it, and so deeply. The economics of nearly every creative industry have been transformed during the past decade, and we’re only just beginning to understand what the new business models will look like. As Matt Belloni noted on Thursday in his always brilliant What I’m Hearing newsletter, it’s a wonder why more people of Maddow and Williams’ stature haven’t made the jump from cable news to streaming: a blessed landscape devoid of alarming chyrons and hysterical disagreement. I suspect they will, and soon, as all the big streaming services begin to conceive their non-fiction offerings. Maddow and Williams will lead the way. And a number of those generationally talented reporters that Williams booked will facilitate the transition, perhaps one day as talking heads on a streaming news show, or platform, that doesn’t exist yet. The model is becoming clear; the creative innovation will follow.

Last weekend, shortly after reading this note, you might have noticed a highly unusual tweet from the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, with a fortune of more than $300 billion. Musk, debonair and cocksure, appeared to be crowd-sourcing an important personal and financial decision: with a large taxable event on the horizon, should he sell a small but substantial number of his TSLA shares?

What in the world was going on here, I wondered. And so I texted Bill Cohan, who is both a fearless Wall Street reporter and the most financially sophisticated journalist I have ever met. (This is hardly a surprise, of course. Bill spent nearly two decades as an M&A banker, and he remains as comfortable around a deal book as he does a Google doc.) A few days later, Bill came back with the real story, along with a prediction of what’s next for Musk, who indeed sold a healthy number of shares this week while somehow preventing Tesla’s stratospheric stock price from falling substantially. The party is about to end, Bill suspects.

But if you read one piece of Puck journalism this week, I implore you to check out Baratunde Thurston’s incredible, hilarious, moving, and mind-bending explanation of how fears of critical race theory have electrocuted our culture. “White backlashes against racial progress are as American as genetically-modified apple pie,” Baratunde writes. “But critical race theory has unleashed a new torrent of grievances. I can’t solve everyone’s problems, but I think I can suggest a more useful way to frame the debate.” Please take him at his word. You’ll be glad you did.

Thanks so much for your support. Have a great weekend.

Jon

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