Good morning,

Happy Saturday and welcome back to The Backstory—your weekend capsule of the best work that we are publishing at Puck. 

It was another incredible week here, with extraordinary reportage on some of the most pressing stories of our time—the ongoing CNN fiasco, the Joe Rogan pandemic, Putin’s will-he-or-won’t-he diplomacy, Eminem and Dre’s halftime performance, and the emerging secret powerhouse behind David Zaslav’s empire. Check out our best work from the week here, and stick around, below the fold, for the backstory on how it all came together.

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MEDIA:

Eriq Gardner reveals the story behind the N.F.L.’s halftime show.

And… 

Dylan Byers reports on the latest intrigue in the Jeff Zucker-Chris Cuomo-Jason Kilar blood feud.

WASHINGTON:

Julia Ioffe untangles Vladimir Putin’s self-made crisis.

And…

Peter Hamby deduces the Democrats’ Covid curse.

HOLLYWOOD:

Matt Belloni explains why Shari Redstone is staring into the abyss.

SILICON VALLEY:

Baratunde Thurston singularly breaks down the Joe Rogan fiasco.

And…

Teddy Schleifer gets the skinny on the 29-year-old crypto billionaire taking over the town.

And and…

Brian Morrissey foretells digital media’s next pivot.

WALL STREET:

William D. Cohan reveals the secret muscle behind Warner Bros. Discovery.

THE POWERS THAT BE:

Get the real inside story from our all-star team on the latest episode of The Powers that Be, hosted by Peter Hamby.

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The Joe Rogan Playlist

It was barely 11:00 a.m. on Monday morning, and I was digging into a pile of work in advance of Puck’s daily co-founder meeting—our standing chat to discuss everything from our company’s latest subscriber metrics and hiring targets to partnership prospects and the pressing details emanating from our data stack. And, as always, there was a ton to discuss.

Only a few days earlier, Matt Belloni had hosted our first live, in-person event: a private dinner at Jason and Lauren Blum’s stunning house, attended by leaders from the entertainment industry. Meanwhile, Eriq Gardner had published a blockbuster story about the internal negotiations behind Dr. Dre’s Super Bowl halftime show. The story, which posited the N.F.L.’s apparent recognition that the performance might open a mini-theater in the culture wars, went viral and became its own cultural talking point. And as Vladmir Putin waffled about his invasion of Ukraine, our Julia Ioffe had established herself as the country’s foremost expert on the topic. 

I’d been up since dawn to process it all, including a torrent of email back-and-forth around 4 a.m. to troubleshoot one particular issue. I was probably already on my sixth cup of coffee when I realized that I’d forgotten to get my wife something for Valentine’s Day. I added it to my to-do list and sat down to begin my work day.

As I sat in front of my computer, Slack messaging with my colleagues after the sun rose, I caught an unusual text pop up on my phone at 10:43 a.m. It was from Kara Swisher, the one and only journalist-entrepreneur-pioneer and cross-media force-of-nature, asking me if I might be able to speak at her first-ever Pivot conference in Miami. Someone had dropped out. Could I swing it?

I thought about it for about a nanosecond… Kara is a legend in our business, and someone who has been a true professional and intellectual role model for me. And I knew I had a lot to learn from the august speakers that she had booked at the conference: Meredith Kopit Levien, the C.E.O. of The New York Times Company; David Solomon, the C.E.O. of Goldman Sachs; Kara, herself, and Scott Galloway, the iconoclastic entrepreneur and professor, and Kara’s sidekick on Pivot. Plus, it was Miami in February. I told my wife and kids that I’d make up Valentine’s Day soon enough—honestly, I’m sure they were happy to be rid of me for a day or two—and I was on the next plane to South Beach.

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Onstage in Miami, Kara and I had a great conversation about the evolution of digital media—where it started, the trough years, and where it’s headed. In many ways, she was the Magellan of the industry, starting All Things D with the legendary Walt Mossberg back at the Journal before flexing her entrepreneurial muscles and co-founding Recode, which was swiftly acquired by Jim Bankoff’s Vox Media. 

Kara has since expanded into multiple podcasts, multiple tentpole events, books, and more. The C.E.O.s of the two companies that she writes and podcasts for were both in attendance at Pivot MIA, but yet she was unquestionably in charge. She’s perhaps the most pure distillation of something we discuss all the time at Puck—the power of creative talent in the marketplace. 

Our chat covered the remaking of the media landscape around the creator, a welcome change that I know will bring with it a flourishing of great work. We also discussed the evolution in the culture of our own artform, as journalists have come alive to their economic value as domain experts and storytellers and societal drivers. During one poignant moment, she asked why Puck had introduced its own innovative business model, which requires that our jouirnalists are equity holders in the company, and that they think like businesspeople, like owners, themselves. I’ll admit that I answered candidly, and off-the-cuff. If we didn’t come together to insist upon this model of partnership, who else would have? There is strength in our numbers and commitment to one another.

Our chat concluded with a searing question—Kara is nothing if not the fiercest interviewer on the planet—about Spotify. Was it a media company?, she asked. Did it handle the Joe Rogan controversy appropriately?

Rather than convey my own response, I want to turn your attention to an extraordinary piece of journalism produced by our own Baratunde Thurston that grapples far more deeply with this question and the fallout. Indeed, Baratunde’s essay, entitled My Joe Rogan Playlist, was perhaps the most important piece of journalism produced at Puck last week, and I implore you to read it. It’s a perfect example of the kind of work you can only find on our platform—and an example of what happens when elite creators say the quiet part out loud.

Have a great weekend,

Jon

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