'Hits' Payola, Disney's Succession Drama, and the Search for Jack Ma

Good afternoon and welcome back to The Daily Courant, a private email for subscribers highlighting the latest head-turning journalism being published at Puck.

Today, we draw your attention to Matthew Belloni's exclusive on a particularly brazen quid pro quo in Hollywood media. Of course, the industry is full of open secrets like Ozy and The Wrap. But we've never seen anything quite like Hits magazine's proposed cash-for-coverage scheme.

Plus, below the fold, William D. Cohan examines the disappearance of Jack Ma. And don't forget to listen to the latest episode of The Powers That Be—available on Apple Podcasts and on Spotify—featuring Puck's elite journalists going deep on everything from the rocky transition C.E.O. transition inside Disney to what's really driving Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in Washington.

‘Hits’ Magazine Will Give You Great Coverage for Just $150,000 a Year

I’m no Pollyanna when it comes to the trade press. But I’ve never seen a quid pro quo as explicit as this proposed contract sent to a major talent agency.

It’s open season for open secrets in the media industry. The New York Times’ Ben Smith took down Carlos Watson’s Ozy Media by simply illuminating (albeit in jaw-dropping fashion, complete with its C.F.O. allegedly impersonating a YouTube executive) the sham puffery of a media outlet without an actual audience—a fact that most people in the media already assumed about Ozy. Then on Friday, The Daily Beast revealed The Wrap boss Sharon Waxman to be an insane bully, who presides over a toxic sweatshop that “degrades” employees. Again, something most of us in Hollywood media knew years ago.   

It got me thinking about other open secrets in media. Are you familiar with Hits magazine? It’s a well-read music trade publication, probably third behind Billboard and Pollstar. They cover deals, hirings-and-firings, charts and “innuendo” (their word) with a print magazine and web arm called Hits Daily Double. It’s also pretty well-known in the music business that Hits is pay-for-play, meaning it extracts financial deals with companies to guarantee certain coverage in exchange for money.

Listen, I’m no Pollyanna when it comes to the trade press. Having worked at a trade for more than a decade, I know better than most how it works when the subjects of the articles are also the advertisers/subscribers. Back-scratching and sponsored content are common. Music is particularly incestuous, with a history of payola going back decades.  

But I’ve never seen anything as explicitly quid pro quo as this proposed contract that was sent by a Hits “research editor” in August to a major talent agency. (The agency says it refused to sign it; it then got passed around as a laughingstock and eventually leaked to me.) For the low-low-low price of $150,000 a year (“billed monthly,” according to the contract), the agency would get ...

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