In the wake of Watergate, journalists put a premium on detachment from political and corporate power. The assumption was that news organizations and their top journalists had their own power. With their large audiences, which provided agenda-setting power, they didn’t need to grovel for access or publicly revel in their intimacy with influential people. Many of the new generation of publications, by contrast, trumpet the fact that their principal audience is insiders and their principal interest is private intrigue and public scene-making. Journalists cast themselves as consummate insiders, and devote large coverage to their own industry. The new newsletter company Puck, for instance, writes as much about CNN president Chris Licht and his struggles to transform the network as it does about the possibility of a dangerous new conflict with China. “Elite journalists are our influencers,” Puck co-founder and editor-in-chief Jon Kelly boasted to the New Yorker. The publication hosted a big launch party at the French embassy.
