Good morning,

Happy Saturday and welcome back to The Backstory—your weekend capsule of the best work that we are publishing at Puck. Welcome to all the new subscribers to our community. You can look forward to this email directly from me, Puck’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, every Saturday morning. 

It was another electrifying week at Puck, marked largely by Julia Ioffe’s extraordinary reportage on the crisis in Ukraine, Dylan Byers’ incredible scoopage on Jen Psaki’s broadcast ambitions, and Teddy Schleifer’s revelations about the political curiosity of Steve Jobs’ heir. Check out some of our very best work, below, and stick around for the backstory on how it came together.

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WASHINGTON:

Julia Ioffe sees over Putin’s Iron Curtain.

And…

Tina Nguyen gets the dirt on Trump’s media empire.

And…

Dylan Byers breaks the news on cable news’ courtship of Jen Psaki.

MEDIA:

Dylan returns for more with a scoop on the next executive editor of The Times.

And…

Eriq Gardner reveals the new law that could impact Allison Gollust’s CNN exit.

HOLLYWOOD:

Matt Belloni reveals the hottest bidding war in the town.

SILICON VALLEY:

Teddy Schleifer scoops the political ambitions of Steve Jobs’ heir.

WALL STREET:

William D. Cohan calls B.S. on the so-called SPAC King. 

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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Back in the U.S.S.R.

I’ve known Julia Ioffe since we were young pups in this business, back in the aughts, both imagining big and exciting careers. We worked together briefly when I was an editor at Bloomberg, and I subsequently watched as her profile skyrocketed at exalted journalistic organizations such as The New Yorker, The New Republic, and GQ. 

Julia’s talents were obvious and manifold: she was about the most natural prose stylist I’d ever encountered, a ferociously lucid thinker, and uproariously hilarious. She was also fearless. When she was just entering her prime, Julia moved to Moscow to cover Vladimir Putin’s ruthless consolidation of power. Julia, who had emigrated from the U.S.S.R. to suburban Maryland as a kid, felt like the only way to understand the mind and madness of the Russian strongman was to report from the ground. 

When she joined Puck as a founding partner, employee No. 6, Julia told me that she wanted to take her experience and turn the telescope around, so to speak. She wanted to report on the American political scene, itself a byzantine mess in the wake of the Trump years, as if she were a foreign correspondent. Humorously, she likened herself to Jane Goodall, the renowned British anthropologist, examining the swamp creatures on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. Her interest lay in the post-January 6th recalibration of Washington, that amnesia-soaked reputation laundromat. Furthermore, she wanted a break from Putin and Russian politics.

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History, it turns out, had other ideas. And during Putin’s harrowing drumbeat toward war in Ukraine during the past month, Julia has become the most important American journalist on the unfolding crisis. Her extraordinary scholarship of the region, the players, its recent and ancient history (not to mention her much-appreciated moments of levity) has not only made her indispensable to Puck’s community, but it has also made her an urgently needed voice of clarity for Americans trying to decipher the situation on the ground—Putin’s false flags, Joe Biden’s diplomatic strategy, and the evolving situation in the Donbas region. As Putin went to war this week, the producers at CNN and MSNBC wisely turned over much of their air to Julia in order for her to share the latest news and perspectives. On Twitter, she feverishly reported in both English and Russian, in real time. On Thursday, she shared her insights on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

After the taping, a couple of us at Puck took Julia out for a quiet dinner at an old haunt near Carnegie Hall. She was joined by her parents and sister, who had made the trip up from Baltimore and Philadelphia, respectively, to watch her in the studio audience. The circumstances and context of the unfolding events weighed deeply on everyone’s mind. Half a world away, innocent people were being attacked and invaded and murdered by a bloodthirsty tyrant viciously endeavoring to reclaim the phony, revisionist glory of a past century. That very morning, Julia had shared on our Slack channel a chilling story about Russian mobile crematoriums that were being sent into Ukraine to manage the carnage. 

On the other hand, there was something powerful and poignant to appreciate at dinner. Julia’s parents had fled the Soviet Union a generation ago—an extraordinary leap of uncertainty that led to extraordinary outcomes for their family. (My own kids are approximately the same age as Julia and her sister when they emigrated, and I think of her parents’ heroism and selflessness often.) All these years later, it was moving to be among the Ioffes as they were able to celebrate their daughter’s ascent as the premier voice on Putin’s existential threat. On some very primal level, their decision to choose democracy over communism had come to fruition in an unprecedented manner. There is a lot that’s wrong with the world now. But that dinner reminded me what still works so perfectly about America. As Julia noted eloquently on Colbert, democracy requires relentless work, and vigilance. Occasionally, we take it for granted and assume other nations are as comfortable with the principle as we are. But that’s just not the case.

The situation in Ukraine is evolving quickly, so fast that it’s hard to keep up. But I plead with you to make time this weekend to read Julia’s latest piece, Putin’s New Iron Curtain, which deftly articulates his geopolitical peccadilloes, his Stalin complex, and foreshadows how this week could rewrite history. It’s very much worth your time. 

Have a great weekend,

Jon

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