One of the news feeds I subscribe to is called Puck. Puck is an American digital media company founded in 2021 that focuses on “the inside news and conversation at the nexus of Wall Street, Washington, Silicon Valley & Hollywood.” Puck is described as a platform for “smart, engaging (and, yes, occasionally dishy) journalism owned and operated by the journalists themselves.” It covers what it considers to be the “four centers of power” in the United States: Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. It’s a subscription-based newsletter platform that charges $100 annually (the perfect price point for me that says its affordable and yet still valuable) for all-access reporting. Puck journalists are given equity in the company and receive bonuses based on the number of subscribers their articles produce. That feels like just the right balance between being capitalistic and still being collectivist. The platform primarily operates through specialized newsletters covering different beats like media and entertainment industry coverage, Wall Street and finance, politics and Washington news, Silicon Valley and tech, the art market coverage, and even fashion industry reporting. As of 2024, Puck has 40,000 paid subscribers, which the Wall Street Journal reported had “grown significantly since then.” The name references both Shakespeare’s mischievous character Puck and the historic Puck Building in Manhattan where the humor magazine Spy was once based, and, by-the-way, where Kim and I celebrated our wedding in 2007. The New Yorker (my longest-standing magazine of choice) described Puck’s editorial tone as being “deliberately clubby,” with part of the appeal being that “its writers move in the same elevated spaces as the people whom they cover.” I can swear by this since Bill Cohan, the Wall Street writer is a long-time friend of mine ever since we met when he wrote House of Cards about the Bear Stearns collapse.
Matt Belloni is a prominent entertainment industry journalist and media executive who has become one of the most influential voices covering Hollywood. Belloni is a founding partner at Puck, where he joined in May 2021 and writes a twice-weekly newsletter called “What I’m Hearing” about the entertainment industry. Belloni spent 14 years at The Hollywood Reporter and five years before that practicing entertainment law. In 2020, Belloni and The Hollywood Reporter won the National Magazine Award for General Excellence from the American Society of Magazine Editors. He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from UC Berkeley and a law degree from USC School of Law, where he was a member of the USC Law Review. This legal background gives him unique insight into entertainment industry contracts and business dealings. Belloni has become so influential that he’s described as “not just one of the most feared journalists in Hollywood” but someone who “has become part of the script” and “a celebrity in his own right who lives rent-free in the minds of studio chiefs, agents, and other power players.” His newsletter “What I’m Hearing” has become essential reading for Hollywood insiders, providing behind-the-scenes insights into the entertainment industry’s power dynamics, business deals, and corporate machinations. The combination of his legal training, journalistic experience, and insider access has made him one of the most trusted and well-connected reporters covering the entertainment business. I even recently saw him get a cameo on Seth Rogan’s The Studio show on Apple TV. Matt Belloni appeared as himself in episodes 9 and 10 of the first season, playing an entertainment journalist and host of a podcast … which is exactly what he does in real life at Puck.
This morning I read Matt Belloni’s article about a long interview he had with Lorne Michaels. How strange it seems to me that the first Lorne we all knew was Lorne Greene, the Canadian actor who became famous for his distinctive deep voice and iconic television roles, most notably playing Ben Cartwright, the patriarch of the Cartwright family, on the long-running Western television series Bonanza (1959-1973). This role made him a household name and earned him the nickname “Pa Cartwright.” Lorne Michaels is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian who is best known as the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live” (SNL). As Bonanza was going off the air, in 1975, NBC hired Michaels to create a late-night comedy show for a younger demographic (that was the year I graduated from college, so that was people like me…especially those of us living in NYC). The show was groundbreaking for its live format, topical humor, and launching pad for comedy talent like John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Martin Short, Phil Hartman, Chris Farley, David Spade, Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolph, Kate McKinnon, Pete Davidson, and Cecily Strong. Michaels continues to executive produce SNL today, making him one of the longest-tenured producers in television history. The subject of the interview was mostly about Michael’s take on the recent changes to late-night TV and the SNL50 show that was on earlier this year, celebrating the 50 years of comedy that the show has had, shaping much of my generation’s psyche.
Two things from that interview jumped out at me and bear mention. The first was when Belloni and Michaels were talking about the musical part of SNL50. I guess there was a lot of debate about ending with either Paul Simon with Sabrina Carpenter or with Paul McCartney. Both Simon and McCartney reached stardom at the same time about 1964 even though their tracks of folk versus rock were somewhat different. It is an appropriate conundrum as to which better musically represents my generation and specifically Lorne Michael’s generation. He went with Simon and Carpenter singing Homeward Bound (another appropriate choice) except with slightly changed lyrics to accommodate Carpenter’s generational sensibilities. In the line “Every day’s an endless stream…of cigarettes and magazines”, she swapped out cigarettes for airport lounges. That was culturally understandable and a reasonable modernization, but Belloni noted that they should also have taken out magazines as anachronistic. I found that a very poignant reminder of the times from a noted journalist.
The other thing Lorne Michael’s commented about was the recent changes to late night TV and specifically CBS’s removal of Steven Colbert, presumably for his inflammatory political stances. He harkened back to Tommy Smothers and his show’s cancellation in 1969 by CBS due to his strident and outspoken stand on the Vietnam War. Michael’s comment was that Smothers never got over it, even refusing to appear on SNL in its early days. Perhaps it was just the sense of rejection, but Michaels felt that politics is ever-present and ebbs and flows in severity, but that the show goes on. Belloni did not contest this, but I would at least choose to wonder if under the extreme severity of the sanctions on American culture being imposed by Trump, whether this time the show will, indeed, go on.