A White House Divide, Tiger’s Split, a Disney Surprise

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Good morning,

Thanks for reading The Backstory, our weekly digest of the best new work at Puck.

As usual, it was an exciting week: Eriq Gardner explained the bizarre legal ramifications of a Tiger Woods split; Teddy Schleifer revealed Reid Hoffman’s disruptive new fundraising strategy; Matt Belloni reported the fallout from the set of Lauren Sanchez’s Hollywood debut; Julia Alexander analyzed Shari Redstone’s BET decision; Tara Palmeri scooped a White House divide over Hunter Biden; and Julia Ioffe penetrated the anxieties of the town’s foreign policy elite. Meanwhile, Bill Cohan provided the definitive, Goldman-inflected piece on the final days of SVB while Baratunde Thurston dug into the absurdist “woke financing” wars.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

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WALL STREET:
Bill Cohan conveys the drama, agony, and botched deal-making during SVB’s final days.
and…
Baratunde Thurston wades into the “woke” financing fears.

SILICON VALLEY:
Teddy Schleifer explains why liberal mega mega-donor Reid Hoffman could be helping DeSantis beat Trump.

MEDIA:
Dylan Byers charts the ascent of Jen Psaki.
and…
Eriq Gardner details the long tail legal fallout from Tiger Woods’ breakup.

HOLLYWOOD:
Matt Belloni has the only-in-Hollywood story of Lauren Sanchez’s maiden voyage in the screen trade, plus a pleasant surprise in Burbank.
and..
Julia Alexander weighs in on the Shari Redstone-Bob Bakish M&A strategy.

WASHINGTON:
Tara Palmeri has the calculus behind Jeff Roe’s power move.
and…
Julia Ioffe channels the concerns of The Blob.
and…
Tina Nguyen explicates the Trump pre-indictment frenzy.

PODCASTS:
Matt raises the issue of franchise model fatigue on The Town.
and…
Peter Hamby and Dylan talk CNN on The Powers That Be.

Inside the Room

Early in my career, I received the assignment of a lifetime. As I’ve noted before in this space, I didn’t come of age professionally in the familiar ranks of journalism—biding time at a regional paper, or a trade, or a local station while hoping for my big break. Instead, my big break happened before my career even started: as a lowly 21-year-old, by good fortune, I happened to be gainfully unemployed and sufficiently available at the precise moment when the legendary editor Graydon Carter needed an extra editorial assistant. My job was simple: to do as I was told and, along the way, learn the subtle and ineffable craft of editing from the master of the art.

People tend to think of editing as a literary vocation, but that’s only one part of the equation. As Graydon demonstrated, an editor’s job was one part creative executive, another part investment banker, yet another rainmaking lawyer, all with the sangfroid of an expert problem-solver. A great editor took a snapshot of the culture and presented it back anew as an editorial product—informative, mirthful, dignified, never dull. It was no small feat. That task required an endless hunger for wisdom and position in the information flow. And so, occasionally, my job would take me to odd places.

One day, for instance, Graydon asked if I could squire a copy of the latest edition of Bob Woodward’s book on George W. Bush’s embattled presidency and his fumbled orchestration of the Iraq War. He wanted to assign a piece about the book to one of the magazine’s top writers, and also read a copy, himself. Fair enough. The only challenge, of course, was that the book wasn’t available for a week. And, as Bush’s popularity languished, it also happened to be the most coveted non-fiction book in years. Woodward was about to appear on 60 Minutes the following Sunday, and everyone (including Bush and Rummy and Wolfowitz and everyone else in the White House) wanted to read it, themselves, too.

I recall vividly that Friday, some 20 years ago, the panic with which I looked up an old friend’s phone number and asked for an introduction to her second cousin, who worked in, if I remember this correctly, the Simon & Schuster subsidiary rights department. And I remember taking the F train the following morning to S&S’s exalted headquarters, near Rockefeller Center, where I met this kind-hearted soul by a side door as she slipped me a couple copies of the book in a brown bag, as if I was taking two slices of pizza with me for lunch. From there, I flagged a cab on Sixth Avenue and headed up to the writer’s apartment on Lex in the 70s. I recall this episode every time I pass through the neighborhood.

I raise this memory not merely to recap an anecdote from my formative years, but rather because it suggests how much things have changed in our culture. Twenty years ago, a Woodward book practically stopped the world in its tracks. His reporting and disclosures generated endless news cycles of coverage, and reframed how we thought of the most seismic events and their participants. These days, especially at Puck, we feel it’s our responsibility to provide this sort of value proposition—entering readers into the inside conversation, the plot that only the true insiders know—on a daily basis. We’d also like to make the inside conversation more accessible than it has ever been.

This week provided a case in point. Matt Belloni expertly explained not only the travails of Lauren Sanchez’s maiden voyage into the screen trade, but also the surprising economics underpinning Bob Iger’s streaming strategy. Teddy Schleifer revealed the next shoes to drop in the S.B.F. imbroglio, and Reid Hoffman’s unprecedented attempt to defenestrate Trump in the primaries, even if that means inadvertently supporting DeSantis. Tara Palmeri documented a split within the White House, one wherein Joe Biden is encouraging his son to essentially go outside the chain of command to clear his own name and reputation. And in great Woodwardian fashion, Dylan Byers had all the extraordinary details about how a short Vanity Fair interview enraged executives at Disney.

But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I wholeheartedly recommend diving into Bill Cohan’s exhilarating article on the final days of Silicon Valley Bank. The Last Days of SVB is an extraordinary story, expertly told, detailing how various failed deals, botched Zoom calls, and missed opportunities led to its very collapse. It’s the final chapter in Bill’s trilogy on the crisis, which we are so proud to publish. These are the stories of our time, told in real time. It’s exactly what we want you to expect from Puck.

Have a great weekend,
Jon