Can Puck reinvent the news business for the influencer age?

Today, I’m talking with Sarah Personette, CEO of Puck, which is a fancy new media company that’s been around for just about five years now. Puck hires big stars and gives them newsletters that are all mostly part of a subscription bundle. These newsletters are often must-reads in their categories — everyone in Hollywood reads Puck’s Matt Belloni, for instance. Those reporters then get equity in Puck and a share of the company’s revenue. The idea is to combine the financial incentives of the influencer economy with the rigor of old-school journalism — you’ll hear Sarah say journalists were the original influencers, which is Puck’s catchphrase. Decoder listeners know that I have a lot of questions about that, and how it all fits into the modern media landscape.  Verge subscribers, don’t forget you get exclusive access to ad-free Decoder wherever you get your podcasts. Head here. Not a subscriber? You can sign up here. The creator and influencer economy works very differently than journalism does. If you take a high-level look at the business of most creators, they all kind of look like little ad agencies, doing brand deals and negotiating rates in a way that has always felt incompatible with journalism, at least to me. I don’t begrudge anyone this reality; that’s where the money is, especially since the big platforms that distribute content tend to pay very little for it, if they pay anything at all. And since the biggest audiences are on the platforms, finding a way to bridge the gap is basically the challenge in media — how do you find new readers who are willing to pay without accidentally giving your work away for free on platforms that don’t seem to value it very much? I’ve had versions of this conversation with a lot of media people over the years: everyone from the CEO of The New York Times and the publisher of The Wall Street Journal to streaming service executives, digital media folks, and, of course, a bunch of creators. Usually these conversations are prett...

Fonte: The Verge
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