Good morning,

Happy early Thanksgiving. It’s Jon Kelly, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Puck, our new media company intently focused on the nexus of Hollywood, Washington, Silicon Valley, and Wall Street. Herewith, some of the most memorable work that you might have missed during another fantastic week. And stick around, below the fold, for the backstory on how it all came together.

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HOLLYWOOD:

Matt Belloni on the Star Wars plot twist no one saw coming.

WASHINGTON:

Tina Nguyen goes to Bari Weiss University.

MEDIA:

Dylan Byers has more on MSNBC’s internal machinations.

WALL STREET:

Bill Cohan articulates The Jack Welch Conundrum.

SILICON VALLEY:

Teddy Schleifer gets the O.G. Google God to spill the beans on Big Tech.

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The other day, I was out for a run in the increasingly ominous northeast chill when Spotify’s algorithm served me an unlikely delight: a song called Beach Dr. by a Washington, D.C. artist named Amir Mohamed el Khalifa, better known by his stage name, Oddisee. Years ago, when I was only just dreaming up what Puck could become, I became infatuated with the song—a long, sonorous and eerie instrumental that I always presumed attempted to articulate Oddisee’s own internal struggle to transcend from a being a producer to becoming an artist, himself; the absence of lyrics in the song, I also assumed, demonstrated that tension between the beginning and the end of his journey. I listened to it over and over again to the point where it became the background music of my life.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not a music geek and I’m certainly not a music writer and, trust me, I’m really not an oversharer, either. But at the time, I was beginning my own personal transcendance from an editor to an entrepreneur, and the song comforted me in moments of pause and uncertainty—providing the clear, if occasionally maudlin, recognition that I wasn’t the first person out there attempting to change my axis in a creative field.

Hearing it again, years later, and at this spot on the calendar, made it hard not to be thankful: thankful to our team of extraordinary journalists, my amazing co-founders, and the remarkable group that powers our very young media business. And, of course, to our readers and listeners, whose engagement has made the past months perhaps the most exciting and fulfilling in our lives. 

Puck grew out of a simple premise: elite journalists are the original influencers, special talents who should be able to connect with their audiences in new and exciting ways. The most reassuring trend in the media business, after all, is the arc towards authenticity. Back when I began my career, glossy magazines and multi-camera studios attempted to productize journalism in a way that could often feel artificial and undifferentiated. Can you tell me, with a straight face, what made each evening’s network newscast different from the others? 

But the rise of podcasting, social feeds, newsletters, the Netflix unscripted boom, and virtual events are powerful signals in our industry. They suggest that audiences don’t merely want the finished product: they want access to the story behind it. At Puck, we like to say that we believe in farm-to-table journalism—a philosophy that suggests that modern readers don’t just want the item on the menu, but also the narrative behind it, and they’d also like the chef to tap the table, if possible. 

That’s our promise to you, the reader. And I know I’ll be spending some time over the holiday thinking about how we can bring you closer than ever to the stories that matter the most at the nexus of Wall Street, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and Washington, and to our incredible team that covers it like none other, breaking down the fourth wall along the way.

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I may be more attuned to the Substack phenomenon than most, given my day job in the media business, but I’ve watched with wonder at the career arcs of Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan, two writers from two different generations, who left their perches at traditional publications for the subscription newsletter platform after decrying that the so-called speech police was out to get them. I have little doubt that their provocative commentary inflamed their colleagues at The Times and New York, respectively. I also had little doubt, upon their departure, that their mini-cancellations, seemingly stage-managed as they were, would probably become personal boons, financially at least, for their careers. As we fundraised for Puck, I’d occasionally hear about a “right-wing media play” that was circulating in the industry. I wondered if they were behind it.

That rumored media business has not materialized, but their latest endeavor is far grander. Weiss recently announced the formation of a yet-unaccredited institution of higher learning, The University of Austin, with seed money coming from Joe Lonsdale, the Peter Thiel protégé and right wing mega donor-cum-apostate. (Teddy Schleifer published a great interview with Lonsdale a couple months ago, by the way.) The news floored me. Was this real? Was it some University of Phoenix meets Fox News on The Prairie? Was it an ideological recruiting theater, or something more serious? 

So I immediately started texting Tina Nguyen, in my mind the industry’s top expert on the machinations and intellectual currents on the right. Whether or not you agree with Weiss’ politics, I encourage you to read Tina’s excellent story, Is Bari Weiss U. For Real?. The digital economy has remade the conservative movement in America, and you’ll learn about how higher education was the next, natural step.

The ability to respond to the news by turning to a trusted colleague, who just happens to be a domain expert, for the inside dish—that’s the joy of working at Puck, and the feeling never gets old. And so last week, after GE announced that it was vivisecting itself into thirds, I started pinging Bill Cohan. Not only did Bill begin his career as a banker at the legendary GE Capital, Jack Welch’s favorite plaything, but he’s also spent the past few years researching, reporting, and writing Power Failure, his forthcoming iconic history of the company’s rise and, well, meiosis. 

GE was the biggest company on the Dow Jones Industrial Average when Welch handed the reins to Jeff Immelt in the days before 9/11 served as an unofficial turning point. (The company had made the engines on the planes that hit The World Trade Center, and partially re-insured both towers.) Two decades later, it has been delisted and become a shell of its old self while former executives, like David Zaslav, Bob Nardelli, and David Cote, had left for phenomenal success elsewhere. GE, once the home of financial and technological innovation, has become an immovable slug. While the Dow has increased nearly 368 percent in the past 12 years, GE’s stock has risen less than 40 percent.

How did GE stumble and leak so much talent in the process? Bill’s piece, The Jack Welch Conundrum, is a searing, provocative and insiderly piece that you’ll only be able to find on Puck. And it’s a useful reminder, as we say around here, that things move fast in this economy. No one could have imagined GE’s fate some twenty years ago. But while the hegemons of our economy—Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla, et al.—may seem to dominate our lives, there’s no guaranteeing that they’ll be here forever.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Jon