Punchbowl News Uses Death of Dianne Feinstein to Helpfully Point Out Benefits of Punchbowl Premium

Punchbowl News marked the passing of Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California by extolling the virtues of their premium membership, which includes text messages on breaking stories.

Punchbowl was first to break news on Friday morning that the trailblazing senator had passed away at the age of 90, prompting a flood of tributes from colleagues and contemporaries like Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and of course President Joe Biden.

But unless you’re a Punchbowl Premium member, you learned the news minutes later than you needed to, the buzzy DC newsletter helpfully pointed out to ordinary mortal subscribers and X/Twitter users.

As the news first began to filter out on Twitter, Punchbowl founder Jake Sherman mentioned the text feature to his Twitter followers, writing “BREAKING NEWS: DIANNE FEINSTEIN HAS PASSED AWAY AT 90” and adding “PUNCHBOWL NEWS TEXT OUT A FEW MIN AGO”:

BREAKING NEWS: DIANNE FEINSTEIN HAS PASSED AWAY AT 90

PUNCHBOWL NEWS TEXT OUT A FEW MIN AGO

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) September 29, 2023

And the newsletter itself featured a bolded notation pitching the service beneath the Feinstein headline and a photo of the iconic senator:

Punchbowl News Premium subscribers got this breaking news an hour earlier via Punchbowl News Texts. Subscribe to Premium to get our breaking news texts and Special Editions before anyone else.

Not everyone appreciated the extra effort — including Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall, among others:

Punchbowl News learned of Sen Feinstein’s death and immediately sought to exploit it to drive premium subs. Kinda gross. pic.twitter.com/A08yuQLc89

— Colby Hall (@colbyhall) September 29, 2023

Did you learn about the death of Senator Dianne Feinstein a little bit earlier than most people via that PUNCHBOWL NEWS TEXT OUT A FEW MINUTES AGO? If so, how did you spend those few minutes of obituary advantage?

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) September 29, 2023

“The point is to stress that if you pay Punchbowl some money, you too can find out that Dianne Feinstein is dead at…roughly the same time as the rest of the world.” https://t.co/HzmmgaDlIr

— Paul Blest (@pblest) September 29, 2023

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