The Digiday Podcast

Puck’s famed journalist-centric publishing model is changing. Sort of. The news outlet debuted in 2021 with its journalists as the company’s audience-facing focal point, not the publication. People would subscribe less so to Puck than to Matthew Belloni’s or Julia Ioffe’s newsletters via Puck. And Puck’s journalists were, in part, compensated directly for the subscribers they attracted. Lately though, Puck’s newsletters have come to resemble publications in their own right. “You almost have sub-brands under Puck that are franchises anchored by core talent versus in probably that first two years, it was a newsletter anchored by core talent,” said Puck CEO Sarah Personette on the latest Digiday Podcast episode. Belloni’s entertainment-oriented “What I’m Hearing” newsletter, for example, has enlisted contributors like legal expert Eriq Gardner and, most recently, former The Hollywood Reporter editor Kim Masters. Similarly, Lauren Sherman’s fashion-centric “Line Sheet” regularly features entries from retail write