Good morning,

It’s Jon Kelly, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Puck. We hope that you had a great post-holiday week. Herewith, some of the most memorable work that you might have missed during the past few days. And stick around, below the fold, for the backstory on how it came together.

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HOLLYWOOD:

Matt Belloni reveals Facebook’s Netflix fantasies.

SILICON VALLEY:

Teddy Schleifer reveals the left’s dark money schemes.

And…

Baratunde Thurston presages the metaverse so you don’t have to…

WASHINGTON:

Julia Ioffe reports on how Capitol Hill became Washington’s WestBeth.

MEDIA:

Dylan Byers has the scoop on the Chris Cuomo saga.

WALL STREET:

Bill Cohan chronicles the latest adventures of Ozy founder Carlos Watson.

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A few weeks ago, on Monday, November 8, I was sitting at the long rustic wooden table that adorns Puck’s headquarters, in Greenwich Village, when a most unusual Slack message emerged on my screen. It was Bill Cohan telling me that he had been approached by a representative for Carlos Watson, the embattled Ozy co-founder. “He wants to talk…,” Bill wrote.

And so began one of the more memorable adventures in crisis management that I can recall from my time in this business. Watson, after all, was still reeling from Ben Smith’s electrifying reporting on Ozy’s various headaches in The New York Times. And it seemed that his latest media adviser thought that Bill, a former Wall Street banker, might be the sort of reporter who could kick the tires on the embattled business, and its founder, in order to declare its defenestration premature. Anyway, it seemed like that was what was going on.

Normally, I focus this weekly column on the backstory behind Puck’s most memorable journalism, but Bill’s piece is the quintessence of how the sausage gets made, or undone, in this craft, and it’s a fascinating illumination of the high-wire act that often takes place behind the story. Its title, Carlos Watson Has a Cold, is a loving and winking tribute to Gay Talese’s fantastically memorable piece on Frank Sinatra, from the April 1966 issue of Esquire—itself, in many ways, a story less about the prince of Hoboken than the very art of profile writing. I could not recommend Bill’s piece more strongly. I think you’ll love it.

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Meanwhile, this has been one of the more extraordinary weeks at Puck since we came into the world just ten short weeks ago. In addition to Bill’s piece, I strongly recommend that you carve out some time to dig into Julia Ioffe’s brilliant, occasionally sad and morbid, but utterly funny and fierce feature on the state of Washington’s gerontocracy, which is a fancy way of saying its age crisis. During a recent trip down to D.C., I was stunned and amazed by how many reporters were whispering about this storyline under their breath, yet unwilling to write about it with grace, aplomb, wit, and force. Julia’s piece, Does Washington Have Senioritis?, is another reminder to me of her singular talents as a journalist: grit, smarts, fairness. And she also happens to be perhaps the most gifted stylist that the D.C. press corps has seen since the late, great Marjorie Williams. 

There are no sacred cows at Puck, and our intrepid team of journalists are always motivated and encouraged to look where others aren’t. To that end, I also highly suggest checking out Teddy Schleifer’s fantastic piece on how the left, which once plugged its nose at the cynical ways in which the G.O.P. armed its political interests with cash, is becoming the vanguard in the dark money games that increasingly underpin our culture. Baratunde Thurston, meanwhile, took a spin, as only he can, at reading the future and explaining what the culture wars will look like refracted through the grim lens of the metaverse.

These articles, along with Matt and Dylan’s typically insightful and in-the-know reporting on Bob Iger’s exit and Cuomo’s hiatus, are reminders of the sort of great work that you can only find at Puck. As it starts to grow dark shortly after noon in the northeast, I hope that you find time to make some room in your weekend to explore this worthy journalism, and reach out to me directly with your feedback. We’re building a community here and we are so grateful that you are a part of it.

Have a great weekend,

Jon

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