The check is in the mail.
Puck, a newsletter start-up catering to elite insiders, announced on Thursday that it had acquired Air Mail, a digital weekly aimed at the global smart set.
The deal cements a union between the email equivalents of an upmarket newspaper and a glossy magazine. Puck is known for its daily dispatches on Hollywood, fashion and politics, while Air Mail publishes a weekend email with yarns from world capitals.
Graydon Carter, who started Air Mail in 2019 after a dazzling tenure atop Vanity Fair, is stepping down as a result of the deal. Also departing is Alessandra Stanley, a former reporter at The New York Times who has been Mr. Carter’s co-editor for seven years. Julia Vitale, the current deputy editor, will be the new editor of Air Mail.
The deal, in which Air Mail shareholders will be largely paid in Puck stock, values Air Mail at $16 million, two people with knowledge of the agreement said. That suggests Air Mail is being sold for substantially less than the value some investors once placed on it — the company has raised $32 million in total funding since 2019.
Sarah Personette, the chief executive of Puck, said in a statement that the two companies would bring together “two of the most valuable audiences” who would benefit from the “sharp insider reporting” of Puck and “elegant cultural storytelling” of Air Mail.
“For our subscribers, this means even more access to world-class journalism,” she said. An Air Mail subscription costs $9.99 a month, while a Puck membership is $17 per month; the company has not yet laid out new prices or its plans for merging its subscriber bases.
The deal follows a yearlong effort by Mr. Carter to find an buyer for Air Mail. Both companies share backers in the private equity firm TPG and Standard Investments — and a fondness for cheeky headlines.
In a statement, Mr. Carter said he had always imagined Air Mail as “the weekend edition to a digital daily news engine,” a vision that he said was now a reality.
“In Puck we have the perfect alignment,” Mr. Carter said.
A major challenge for Ms. Personette and Jon Kelly, a co-founder of Puck, will be wringing maximum value out of Air Mail without its founders. Mr. Carter is synonymous with Air Mail, and his relationship with many of the newsletter’s advertisers goes back decades to his years as editor of Vanity Fair.
At Air Mail, Mr. Carter has reprised his role as a ringmaster of the publishing and entertainment elite, throwing parties for influential authors and Hollywood upper-crusters like David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The deal is a full-circle moment for Mr. Kelly, a onetime protégé of Mr. Carter’s. They praised each other in statements, effectively downplaying a recent report in the media newsletter Breaker that detailed friction between the two men as the deal came to fruition.
Benjamin Mullin reports for The Times on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at [email protected].
Jessica Testa covers nontraditional and emerging media for The Times.
The post Puck Acquires Air Mail, a Newsletter Merger for the Well-Heeled Inbox appeared first on New York Times.
