Decoder with Nilay Patel Can Puck’s CEO reinvent the news business for the influencer age?
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Apr 13, 2026 Sarah Personette, CEO of Puck and former Facebook and Twitter executive, talks about building a media company around star journalists. The conversation digs into trust in news, creator-style incentives versus newsroom traditions, subscriber growth, the Airmail acquisition, equity and pay, platform dependence, and why AI, Washington coverage, events, and video are next.
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Sarah Personette Learned Scale During Facebook's Mobile Pivot
- Sarah Personette said Facebook felt like a startup at 1,000 employees, then rapidly matured after IPO while absorbing Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Atlas.
- She tied that era to the desktop-to-mobile shift, which changed how businesses communicated directly with consumers and later informed her view of media disruption.
Twitter's Sale Became A Leadership Stress Test
- Sarah Personette framed the Elon Musk Twitter acquisition as a test of transparent leadership under volatility rather than as a product or policy discussion.
- She said leading roughly 2,000 people through the public sale taught her to communicate with empathy, evidence, and trust in a VUCA environment.
Puck Treats Trust As A Human Problem
- Sarah Personette argued each faster tech shift internet, mobile, then AI weakened institutional trust and pushed journalism toward personality-led distribution.
- She said trust fell from about 72% in the 1970s to 32%, so Puck centers named reporters as trusted humans subscribers can email directly.