Good morning,

It’s Jon Kelly, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Puck. Happy Saturday! Here’s hoping that you’re looking forward to a couple restful weeks ahead, and that you and your family are staying safe. 

The end of the year is a nice time to downshift—unless you’re working at a start-up. Here at Puck, we’ll be spending the next fortnight churning out the usual sort of incisive, thoughtful, insiderly (and, sure, occasionally dishy) work that differentiates us from the rest of what is available on your digital newsstand. We hope that it provides you with some insight and mirth as you enjoy some time to yourself.

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

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HOLLYWOOD:

Matt Belloni offers Part II of his dissertation on the End of the Marvel Miracle.

WASHINGTON:

Peter Hamby gets personal with Huma.

And…

Tina Nguyen gets the dish on the G.O.P. frontrunners in ‘24.

MEDIA:

Dylan Byers investigates Jeff Zucker’s chess moves at CNN+.

SILICON VALLEY:

Teddy Schleifer elucidates the radical chic billionaire battle royale in San Francisco.

WALL STREET:

Bill Cohan reports on the latest Tesla voodoo.

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Early in my career, when I was just starting out as a low-totem assistant at Vanity Fair, my unceremonious work station was positioned next to the office of one of the magazine’s most glamorous editors. And every fall, this editor would start to get deluged with FedEx packages from luxury fashion houses, boutique vineyards, Scandinavian design studios, artisanal furniture makers, and trendy boutiques in L.A. All day, every day, for weeks, she would unpack the items, lay them out, inspect them, and survey their various advantages and charms. What is all this, I eventually asked her one day. She quickly shot me a kind of quizzical look: naturally, it was the gift guide.

Inevitably, a month or two later, the most beautiful and elaborate treasures would make their way into the pages of the magazine: vintage fish decoy bottle openers, $17,000 record consoles, bespoke sunglasses cases, Chanel bags, weekend jackets, cashmere blankets, luxurious bicycle trunks, artisanal Bloody Mary mixes, Roger Viviet ballet flats, a Fredericks and Mae kite. When people ask me what made the magazine era so special for all those years, I often think about, among other things, the amount of time and precision and thought that went into curating these sorts of lists. Surely the editors of Vanity Fair were circumspect enough to know that not everyone was going to spend seventeen grand on an oak-paneled console; but they also knew that discerning readers and elevated, tasteful audiences at least wanted to know that those items existed. 

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As I’ve noted plenty of times over in this space, it goes without saying that many relics of the magazine era have subsided, and many for good reason. But I’m also optimistic that a number of the magazine arts are coming back, retrofitted for new platforms and eager audiences. Timeless, thoughtful writing; commanding voice; high style, wit, charm, literate intimacy—these were the hallmarks of the trade, and were largely ridiculed as anachronistic in the Web 2.0 decade. But now, in a world with too much choice and not enough quality and taste, they are returning in spades. Indeed, we hope that you find these features in Puck.

I was surprised, however, when a recent all-hands Puck editorial Zoom turned into a bit of nostalgia for the lost art of gift guides—of curation, of delicately showing that writers aren’t simply excellent wordsmiths and journalists, but tastemakers, too. And, it must be said, of acknowledging one of the central hallmarks of both the magazine age and the new one that we hope to create: yes, dear reader, it’s okay to simultaneously publish serious journalism and also delight in the beauty of a great timepiece or chic bomber jacket. 

As a result, we endeavored to create Puck’s First Annual Holiday Guide to Mirth and Merriment. We did it, in short, because our journalists are fashionable tastemakers. If you love Matt Belloni’s newsletter, I imagine that you’ll also want to know what shows he’s watching, the wine he’s pouring this season, and what he’s reading. If you think Tina Nguyen is an elegant stylist, you won’t be surprised to find out that she’s got great taste in music, watches, and gifting. You’ll also get to meet some of the other behind-the-scenes members of our team who have devoted their lives to our growing business.

More than anything, though, we want this festive end-of-year editorial confection to provide you with a deeper connection to our journalists and the work that we produce. Indeed, perhaps the most salient business feature of the magazine era was the relatively loosey-goosey metric that you might just call connectivity. When I was that low-totem assistant, people read V.F. every month to connect with Hitchens and Dunne and Marjorie Williams and of course, Graydon. And now readers connect in new ways, on new devices, and new platforms. The trend toward authenticity is perhaps the most exciting one in our industry. It’s one of the reasons why we’ve decided to intentionally stand up our company before your eyes.

Thanks for reading. We hope that you’ll find the stocking stuffer of your dreams, or at least find a great new show to stream. Have a great weekend.

Jon

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