| I can’t tell you how excited I am to join Puck. I have been an avid reader from the beginning, ever since Matt Belloni launched his must-read email What I’m Hearing in the spring of 2021, before the company had even announced its name or gone to market. Of course, I was hooked by the sheer amount of news Matt broke, and I personally learned a lot from his well-reported analysis. But what really grabbed me was the way he wrote—with an authoritative yet conversational tone that transported me into all the boardrooms in Hollywood, on the lots, and inside the agencies.
My background is a little different: I’m a classically trained journalist who grew up on inverted pyramids, AP Style, and other well-worn formats and principles. Belloni’s email had none of that. In fact, all the Puck private emails eschewed those conventions. They were written like elegant and intimate—and incredibly informative and dishy—dispatches, composed by true insiders. Notably, Puck relied on its own format innovation: an engaging style that resonates with today’s readers, which is exactly how newsletters should be written—as personal letters to subscribers, brimming with news, analysis, gossip, etcetera. (Of note: I may be giving up AP Style, but I will never give up the em dash.)
In many ways, my arrival at Puck represents the full circle of my career. Decades ago, when I was first getting started in this business, I wrote a newsletter—the artfully titled Cablefax Daily—that covered the burgeoning cable TV industry. Cablefax gained a devoted following thanks to a tone that mixed breaking news with industry gossip. Subscribers loved it, and the formula still reigns, even if the convulsions of the media industry ignored it for years. I recognized early on in my Cablefax tenure that there are ways to grab readers beyond the inverted pyramid.
That style was one of the big selling points when I started talking to Jon Kelly about joining Puck last year. (I’ve already asked Jon and Puck’s executive editor, Ben Landy, to “Puckify” my copy as much as they can.) Of course, another big selling point was Puck’s masthead. When Jon talks about a superstar editorial staff, he means it. I find the industry-defining talent of Puck’s writers to be almost intimidating—so much so that I put a lot of internal pressure on myself to deliver scoops as soon as I started. I can’t tell you how relieved I was when I broke the news about the Orioles’ new owners on Tuesday.
Puck already has roots on Wall Street, in Washington, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the media. It expanded into the fashion business. I joined to help Puck get into the sports business. (Thanks to WSC Sports for being our launch sponsor!) It’s an area I know well. I spent 18 years covering sports media for Sports Business Journal and have covered everything from the rise of media rights deals to the fall of the regional sports network business. I get an endorphin rush from breaking news. Over the past couple of years, I was the first to report on deals worth billions of dollars such as the Big Ten’s agreements with Fox, CBS, and NBC and ESPN’s recent deal with the NFL. I was also the first to document Sinclair’s troubles with the regional sports network business. On my last day at SBJ, I broke news of Comcast’s carriage renewal with Viacom.
If you subscribe to my personal email, The Varsity, you will get stories just like those combined with well-reported analysis around trends in the sports business. I will take you deeper into the owner’s box and let you know what is really happening off the field. So please consider subscribing to Puck, if you haven’t already. There’s much more to come. |
