Week of July 23, 2026

From the publisher’s desk

This is not the first time I’ve sung the praises of Wired magazine in this space, and it almost certainly won’t be the last.

The venerable Condé Nast-owned publication has focused on technology news for its entire 33-plus year history, making it perfectly positioned for this era in which the federal government and tech (i.e. Elon Musk, SpaceX, crypto, social media, etc.) are inextricably intertwined. In recent years—and especially since Donald Trump was elected president for the second time—editorial director Katie Drummond and her team have been kicking editorial ass, publishing scoop after scoop after scoop.

Today, in my opinion, Wired is one of the top three journalism publications in the United States—and it has a strong case for being No. 1. (Yeah, the magazine has a metered paywall; in other words, you can only read a few articles per month before being forced to subscribe to read more. But good reporting is expensive and challenging to do, and you really should subscribe and support the work of Wired, if you can afford to do so.)

Wired’s most recent attention-getting scoop, however, hasn’t directly involved the federal government; instead, it focused on entertainment, specifically Madison Square Garden, the legendary New York venue and entertainment company owned by James Dolan (who also owns Sphere Entertainment).

On July 9, Wired reporters Noah Shachtman and Maddy Varner published a piece titled “Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities.” The article focuses on MSG’s “talent” database—obtained by Wired as part of an online leak perpetrated by a hacker—of 39,539 VIPs and performers. An excerpt:

The talent database provides a window into how MSG internally views its famous, rich, and powerful visitors—its well-curated “celebrity row” and its hordes of high-profile fans. The comedian (and longtime Knicks obsessive) Adam Pally is “not to be hosted”—Garden lingo for getting free tickets—“due to previous comments.” Pally has at times been critical of the team’s management.

Iconic hip-hop producer and DJ Pete Rock, whose Instagram is a nonstop ode to the team, is nevertheless marked “DO NOT HOST” in the database. After beloved Knicks enforcer Charles Oakley was forcibly escorted from the Garden, Pete Rock says he called for a boycott of Dolan on Twitter. “None of the other owners are as petty as Dolan is,” Pete Rock tells Wired in a direct message, before addressing his comments to Dolan: “You can’t stop me from being a Knick fan, but your controlling behavior towards people is very unprofessional.”

Daisy Jones and the Six actor Will Harrison is flagged because “GF wrote NYT article.” (Harrison isn’t public about his romantic life in the way many stars are, and we couldn’t find an article that was in any way a match.) In the spring of 2024, actress and model Julia Fox appeared courtside in an extremely revealing outfit; by early April, she was barred from getting complimentary tickets. Anna Wintour, Condé Nast’s chief content officer and global editorial director of Vogue, always dresses impeccably when attending Knicks games and has no record of disparaging Dolan. She’s labeled as “medium risk.” …

The talent database also tracks some celebrities’ race, gender identity, and sexual orientation; 93 entries are marked as “LGBTQIA.” Why MSG felt the need to label Ricky Martin or Phoebe Bridgers or Geese’s Emily Green in this way is unclear.

Unsurprisingly, MSG and Dolan did not like this story at all. Somewhat surprisingly, they decided to sue Wired. As The New York Times (gift link) reported on July 18: “The owners of Madison Square Garden have filed a defamation lawsuit against Wired magazine, claiming an article it published this month had manufactured a ‘false narrative’ that the company was tracking the LGBTQ community for ‘discriminatory purposes.’”

Uh, the Wired piece does not say that. It specifically says the reason for MSG’s tracking of LGBTQ+ statis was “unclear.” To elaborate, I’ll turn things over to Defector writer Dave McKenna, who penned a piece titled “James Dolan Sues Wired Magazine for Writing a Story About His Shitty Ways”: “The 40-page complaint does not challenge the accuracy of Wired’s reporting or facts and figures. It does allege that the reporters ‘combed the dark web’ and ‘cherry picked’ information that had been ‘stolen from MSG by an extortionist hacking group’ to ‘manufacture a false narrative portraying MSG as targeting the LGBTQIA community for discriminatory purposes.’ … The Wired story, from my reading, does not accuse MSG of any of those things.”

So, how did Wired magazine respond to the suit? They issued a statement calling the lawsuit “baseless and ridiculous”—and they exempted the story from their metered paywall, so anyone and everyone can read it, free of charge.

“We look forward to continuing our coverage of MSG, and on billionaire James Dolan’s use of technology across his entertainment empire,” said Wired’s statement, “It’s one part of our wider mission and the critical job of journalists, now more than ever: holding power to account.”

Badass.

Take care,

—Jimmy Boegle, publisher/executive editor