“The San Francisco Standard may seem an unlikely suitor for Charter, which has a global focus. But [Kevin] Delaney said in an interview that the two companies would look to collaborate on big stories such as the explosion of artificial intelligence, its impact on jobs in the technology industry and changes in the way cutting-edge companies are managed — stories that are all rooted in San Francisco.”

—Ana Marie Cox, questioning how much more room for growth Substack has amid subscription fatigue (Wired / Steven Levy)

“It may help that ‘local’ for SFGATE is California (the world’s fourth largest economy)…Today there are 60 employees and ‘we’ve never had a layoff,’ [editor-in-chief Grant] Marek says with pride. SFGATE is now said to be the most profitable news title run by Hearst (which also runs a huge stable of popular magazine titles).”

“Ed Niedermeyer, author of the Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, who filmed a robotaxi braking hard in the middle of the road when passing a police cruiser, echoes that sentiment and compares the influencers to a ‘Greek chorus’ collectively working to bolster the robotaxi’s perception.”

“A 2024 U.S. law required TikTok to stop operating by January 19 unless ByteDance had completed divesting the app’s U.S. assets or demonstrated significant progress toward a sale. Trump, who credits the app with boosting his support among young voters in last November’s presidential election, has extended the deadline three times.”

“The Trump administration on Friday rescinded the layoff notices it lad sent to employees at Voice of America after employees discovered errors in documents detailing the terms that could later nullify or significantly delay President Trump’s attempts to gut the news organization.”

—The opening line of a 2007 Tom Wolfe story in Portfolio magazine, published at the absolute zenith of Condé Nast's "Concorde-and-caviar" era of lavish editorial expense. At $12 a word, Wolfe's fee for that one story was roughly $88,000 (The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum)

“As food and recipe creators flourish on [YouTube], the Times wants to take a bigger bite of the cooking video market, more aggressively pushing into an area that was once dominated by Food Network.”

“Mr. Newsom has adopted an increasingly combative approach with the president since Mr. Trump sent military troops to Los Angeles this month amid his administration’s immigration crackdown. The governor, a Democrat, is taking a page from the president by suing a news media outlet over coverage.”

“If you’re a frequent user of X, formerly known as Twitter, and noticed an increase in video and image ads on the platform, you’re not alone. Marketers have learned to occupy almost your entire smartphone screen with taller ads. 1.91:1 image carousels and image ads make up the majority of sponsored content in our feeds. Gone are the days when 16:9 ads dominated.”

“[Advertisers are] increasingly tapping into a broader ecosystem that includes faceless creators — accounts that build massive followings without a central on-camera figure. And these creators are raking it in.”

“First, Judge William Alsup ruled it was fair use for Anthropic to train on a series of authors’ books. Then, Judge Vince Chhabria dismissed another group of authors’ complaint against Meta for training on their books. Yet far from settling the legal conundrums around modern Al, these rulings might have just made things even more complicated.”

—The first line of a recent edition of the BBC News newsletter The Upbeat that targets "news avoiders." (Press Gazette / Charlotte Tobitt)

“Chanel’s new annual tome, Arts & Culture, was released this week, with the first issue devoted to chronicling the practice and lives of contemporary artists (alongside plenty of promotional Chanel editorial content)…

“Lending an indie feel to things, the publication will be available only at a selection of independent book and magazine stores like Casa Magazines in the West Village of Manhattan, Foreign Exchange News in London, Libreria Bocca in Milan and Still Books in Seoul.”

“Execs at four LGBTQ+-focused publishers Digiday spoke to attributed the slowdowns and pullbacks to the current social and political climate.”

“Age verification is perhaps the hottest battleground for online speech, and the Supreme Court just settled a pivotal question: Does using it to gate adult content violate the First Amendment in the U.S.? For roughly the past 20 years the answer has been ‘yes’ — now, as of Friday, it’s an unambiguous ‘no.'”

“Addressed to the ‘big five’ U.S. publishers — Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan — as well as ‘other publishers of America,’ the letter elicited more than 1,100 signatures on its accompanying petition in less than 24 hours. Among the well-known signatories after the letter’s release are Jodi Picoult, Olivie Blake, and Paul Tremblay.”

“The Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph launched their paywalls at the start of 2020 and reached the 100,000 mark this month…Under INM, the publisher had attempted to set up a paywall on three occasions: in 2008, 2015 and 2017. ‘I was told it wouldn’t work again,’ Vandermeersch said. ‘But we didn’t get cold feet when we realized pageviews and advertising income would decrease.'”