Matt Belloni appears on an episode of "The Studio." (Courtesy of AppleTV+)
In the opening episode of "The Studio," Apple TV’s satire of Hollywood, a fictional studio boss played by Seth Rogen speeds through Los Angeles with a podcast blaring from his car stereo: “I’m Matt Belloni and this is 'The Town.’” Belloni, the Puck journalist whose newsletter and podcast cover the entertainment industry, has become so essential to Tinseltown that he is now woven into fictional portrayals of it.
By the penultimate episode, released this week, Belloni physically appears on screen. Characters in the show scramble to keep a scandal from reaching him, terrified of what he might publish. The episode ends with a cliffhanger—and a classic Belloni moment: someone calls in a tip to him that others are desperate to keep away from the press.
It’s not just clever writing, but a reflection of Belloni’s outsize power in real-life Hollywood. His newsletter, "What I’m Hearing," drops four times a week with the tension of a deadline thriller. Publicists wait up late, sometimes past 1 a.m. on the East Coast, to see if their clients are in the crosshairs. His podcast is appointment listening for the C-suites at Netflix, Disney, Paramount Global, Warner Bros. Discovery, and others in the industry.
Simply put, he’s not just one of the most feared journalists in Hollywood, he’s become part of the script. In effect, Belloni is now a character in the industry he covers, a celebrity in his own right who lives rent-free in the minds of studio chiefs, agents, and other power players. He is name dropped in conversation so much among those who occupy the sector that his ears must be ringing off the hook.
But lately, many of them have been wondering: Is Belloni leaving Puck? Indeed, whispers about Belloni's potential exit from the digital startup he’s called home since 2021 have been running rampant for weeks. When I was in Los Angeles earlier this month, the speculation was inescapable—enough to send me digging…
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Axel Springer chief Mathias Döpfner. (Photo by Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Axing Axel: Ballard Partners has dropped Axel Springer as a client after a pair of stories from its U.S. newsrooms triggered blowback from Donald Trump’s orbit. The high-powered lobbying firm disclosed in a filing this week that it terminated the engagement after roughly $80,000 of work. One flashpoint: a POLITICO story by Rachael Bade and Caitlin Oprysko published last week that painted honcho Brian Ballard as having fallen out of Trump’s favor—an unflattering narrative for a firm that thrives on proximity to power. Then came…
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