Greetings from Los Angeles. In tonight’s email, news and notes on the Disney succession chatter emanating from Toscana and the Rotunda, where Bob Iger’s chair is widely seen as Dana Walden’s to lose.

But first….

🗞️ Post ‘momentum shift’?: Will Lewis says “an interesting momentum shift is underway” at The Washington Post. In a staff memo on Friday, the C.E.O. noted that the last seven weeks have delivered “a sustained period of positive net subscriber growth for the first time since February 2021.” Welcome news. Also notable is the shift in Lewis’s newsroom diplomacy. “It is crucial that we continue to build on these improvements,” he wrote. “All of us in the media industry continue to face significant headwinds and we must keep building on our strong journalistic foundations, serving our customers in engaging ways with news and opinions they can’t get elsewhere, at the same time as making bold moves, adapting, and, importantly, growing.” … We’ve come a long way from “people are not reading your stuff!”

✨ Season of Ezra: After presciently calling on Biden to step down back in February, Ezra Klein has regained pseudo-celebrity status in Democratic circles and in the last week has been the subject of not one but two profiles in New York and The New Yorker, as well as a lengthy piece in Semafor about how his outsized stardom is complicating the Times’ efforts to distance itself from a progressive reputation. For my money—and Ezra’s money, actually—the most notable detail in all this coverage comes from his own reflections on whether he should have gone it alone, without the Times: “I sometimes feel like a dumbass who’s left a ton of money on the table,” he tells New York’s Charlotte Klein. “It’s true that I could make more money doing this independently, but if all the people who do what I do decide to go and capture all of their revenue themselves, then what happens to all the parts of the industry that are frankly more important than what I do, but are not self-sustaining in that way?” And, he adds: “The Times is a unique power. If I had done the same pieces from Substack, would it have mattered?” Alas, it’s the same sort of defeatist mindstate that has stifled innovation in this industry.

💼 Open season in Commsland: After a stretch of notably low turnover in media and tech communications positions, a P.R. source informs me that several big firms are looking for new or additional senior comms people, including Apple, Meta, Peloton, Sonos and, drum roll, Warner Bros. Discovery—no, not to replace Robert Gibbs, but to work under him. Why all the open positions? This person’s theory is that the pendulum is swinging back after a year of cuts that eliminated positions and scared others out of making moves. In any event, happy hunting.

✍️ P.S.: You asked, and we’ve delivered… another member survey, which will help us continue to improve your Puck experience. It should only take a minute or two. Click here to take it—and thanks in advance.

Alas, some strategic considerations probably prevented Walden from making the trip. ABC News, which she oversees, is hosting a presidential debate next month, and Walden’s ties to Harris have already come under heavy-handed scrutiny from Donald Trump and The New York Times. As notably, Walden is seen by most Disney and industry insiders as the leading candidate to take over the entertainment giant when Bob Iger steps down in 2026. Obviously, the optics would have hurt both the company and its news division, as well as her own ambitions—a brand withdrawal for all involved, in Igerian parlance.

Succession at Disney is an evergreen preoccupation in Hollywood and on Wall Street, but recent developments have brought the issue back to the fore. On Wednesday, Disney’s board officially tapped director James Gorman to oversee the succession plan, kicking off the formal aspects of the process. (Gorman, of course, ran an almost effortlessly smooth process to replace himself as C.E.O. at Morgan Stanley.) Meanwhile, Iger gave an interview to Kelly Ripa in which he confessed to being “obsessed” with finding his replacement. Thus, Hollywood’s favorite parlor game recommenced, from Toscana to the Rotunda.

Officially, all four of Iger’s chairpersons—Walden, her fellow entertainment co-chair Alan Bergman, ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro, and Parks chief Josh D’Amaro—are under consideration for the job and will go through the requisite preparation and diligence, including formal mentorship from Iger. In truth, however, only Walden and D’Amaro are broadly seen as leading candidates for the position. Pitaro is still a dark horse, given his experience across Disney’s businesses—media, digital, consumer products—and strong support on the board. But Disney may also one day spin off ESPN (it’s already breaking out financials for the business) and Iger presumably wants to preserve his optionality and keep a great leader in a crucial seat. Bergman, who is fundamentally a finance guy, is seen as very unlikely to get the position.

Increasingly, the conventional wisdom among the creative community in-crowd is that Walden is Iger’s preferred candidate, especially given her formidable skills as a television executive, her deep ties to the creative community, and her recent leadership of Disney’s streaming operation. And, yes, they are also both moored in the Brentwood set: After all, it was Walden who came up with the ruse of a walk-and-talk with Iger so that Disney board chair Susan Arnold could reach him and offer him back his old job. Her office in Burbank has a side door that connects to Iger’s suite.

Her champions and acolytes are the very creators, producers, and agents who are so integral to Disney’s core entertainment business, many of whom she has cultivated and empowered—and whose weighted opinion helped drive Bob Chapek down the Matterhorn. Beyond Hollywood, however, there are many who question whether Walden has the financial experience to manage the myriad complexities of the rest of the business, especially at a time of massive disruption and competition. Sure, some of this may be gendered nonsense masquerading as corporate-speak—both Iger and Michael Eisner came from the creative side of the business… and look what happened to the M.B.A. candidate, Chapek. But it’s worth noting, too, that Disney’s peers, like NBCU and WBD (for better or worse), and soon Paramount, are run by traditional media operators. Reed Hastings appointed Greg Peters as Netflix’s co-C.E.O. upon his ascent upstairs, presumably to placate Wall Street analysts and institutional investors while his partner Ted Sarandos oversaw the content business and strategy.

Is that fair? Obviously, none of the four aforementioned candidates have Iger’s holistic and comprehensive understanding of the business—and can’t without actually serving as C.E.O. D’Amaro may have a far better grasp on dynamic pricing at the theme parks, for instance, but his acumen in Hollywood and his ties to creatives may be as limited as those of his predecessor, Chapek, who failed spectacularly in the position. Meanwhile, many of Walden’s defenders see some sexism at play here, and like to point out that Iger himself was seen as an empty suit before his own ascension—a handsome but boring guy without Eisner’s vision and dynamism. He went on to become one of the most revered and well-regarded C.E.O.s in Hollywood history.

The Iger precedent is a little more nuanced, of course: Iger spent five years as chief operating officer before he became C.E.O., so his range of experience was never in question. Then again, that might hint at the true source of anxiety among the Walden skeptics: not that they think she isn’t ultimately capable of the top job, but that the succession process itself might rush her into a position before she’s had similar experience across the company. “Many see Bob falling for Dana the way he fell for Chapek,” the Disney veteran said, “seeing what he wants to see—not tolerating dissent or criticism—and not actively looking for feedback.”

But Iger’s retirement date is less than two years away. Given the time constraints, as well as the new demands of the job, the best path forward may end up being through a co-C.E.O. structure, not dissimilar to what Hastings set up for Sarandos and Peters at Netflix. Or perhaps Walden could appoint someone to assist with the business, much as Eisner tapped Frank Wells, or, for that matter, Walden herself worked with Gary Newman at Fox.

In some ways, there are parallels between Walden’s own rise and that of her friend Kamala—and this, too, is ultimately a story about tribes and party politics. The creative class is ready to anoint Walden now, while others don’t understand her ascension at all. It’s a lot for the Toscana crowd to chew on. Then again, as one Disney insider reminded me this week, the board’s vote is the only one that counts, and they don’t really care what the Toscana crowd thinks.