Hi! If you feel like this summer's flying past far too quickly, you might be onto something: Earth spinning faster means we're experiencing some of the shortest days on record — as much as 1.36 milliseconds less than 24 hours — this month. Today we're exploring: |
- Print's pressed: The LA Times is going public during a rough patch for newspapers.
- DORKs: Meet the latest class of meme stocks.
- Perfect, TN: Nashville is Americans' favorite US city.
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The LA Times' owner wants to take the struggling newspaper public again |
Having reportedly lost $50 million, laid off more than 20% of its newsroom, and shed some 26% of its daily print readers last year, billionaire Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong's announcement that he plans to take the Los Angeles Times public "over the next year" came as a bit of a shock to some on Monday's "The Daily Show." Jon Stewart and his studio audience cheered the news from Soon-Shiong, who made his money in pharmaceuticals and bought the paper for $500 million in 2018. However, whether investors will share that enthusiasm about the company — where internal tensions have bubbled recently and finances have been shaky for even longer — remains to be seen. As you might expect, it is a tough time to be running a newspaper that still depends on its print business. |
Per February figures from industry publication Press Gazette, the 25 largest newspapers audited in the US last year saw daily print circulation slip 12.7% on average in the six months through September, with the Los Angeles Times seeing the biggest drop of the lot, falling some 25% from the same period in 2023. Not one publication posted increasing print circulation compared to the year before, however, with Press Gazette reporting that there isn't a single US newspaper with a daily average circulation exceeding 500,000 anymore, after The Wall Street Journal slipped by more than 81,000 copies. Unlike The New York Times, the LA Times doesn't have a gargantuan games or cooking side hustle to fall back on, and it didn't even break the top 50 most visited English-language news websites in May, according to Similarweb data via Press Gazette. There has been much ink spilled (mostly online, naturally) about the death of print newspapers, and it doesn't seem like the LA Times is any exception, despite the buzz it got on a late-night talk show — another media mainstay in slow decline. |
What do donut-peddler Krispy Kreme, home-buyer Opendoor, mortgage platform Rocket, and department store Kohl's have in common? With stock tickers DNUT, OPEN, RKT, KSS: together, they make up what we're calling the DORKs, the latest class of meme stocks — each of which has been reinvigorated by fresh interest from Reddit traders, with trading volumes and mentions on r/wallstreetbets soaring. |
In the last two days, an average of 1.76 million call options have changed hands in OPEN, up 12x on the average from the previous 20 sessions; in DNUT, call volumes rose a whopping 33x. |
Every meme, every share, all at once |
Since the GameStop era of 2021, a lot of people have tried to predict the next meme stock, searching for companies that have been struggling, are heavily-shorted by Wall Street, and sometimes come with a hint of nostalgia. While those characteristics remain, what seems to be shifting about the meme stock landscape is the speed at which these moments appear to coalesce — even this DORKs acronym will probably be out of date by mid-afternoon, as feverish trading spreads, and the lifespan of a meme stock appears to be shortening. On Monday, Opendoor traded a bonkers 298% of its market cap after one bullish report from a hedge fund manager. Retail traders' attention then spread to department store Kohl's, which ripped a record 38% higher yesterday, and Krispy Kreme, which quietly rose 27%. After the bell yesterday, it was RKT's turn to soar, catalyzed by a late-night Reddit post — although since the market opened this morning, RKT has shed much of its gains. Maybe the retail investors have already moved on... with shares of GoPro up 40%+ this morning, that may well be the case. |
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Nashville tops the list of Americans' favorite US cities |
Whether you're roped in by honky-tonk, hot chicken, hospitality, or the Queen of Country herself, there's plenty of fixin's to be pickin' from when you visit Nashville. The capital of Tennessee was named the city that Americans view most favorably out of the top 50 most populous US cities, per a new YouGov survey published Monday. Indeed, Nashville's net favorability — the share of Americans who viewed each city favorably minus the share who viewed it unfavorably — was +44 overall, ahead of Colorado Springs (+40) and San Diego (+39). Nashville was also the most popular city among respondents living in cities (tied with Colorado Springs), as well as among those living in suburbs, towns, and rural areas, with a net score of +41. Interestingly, the cities that were most overwhelmingly preferred by urbanites were two hubs both known for facing (political and vehicular) gridlock, Washington DC and Los Angeles, with disparities between scores from city dwellers and small-towners totaling 33 and 30, respectively. |
On the other end, San Antonio in Texas — famed for its local charm and feel despite being the seventh-most populous city in the US — was considered 20 points more favorable by non-city dwellers than cosmopolitan counterparts. While there's an unsurprising trend observable in the data that people who live in cities tend to prefer cities over those who don't, whether or not respondents had actually been to the city that they were weighing in on also affected the outcome of the survey. Indeed, Raleigh, North Carolina, beat Nashville in terms of positive opinions among Americans who had been to the city in question, totalling +73 net favorability within this cohort compared with Nashville's +65. |
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- The way fourward? The biggest international study of the four-day work week yet made for happier, healthier employees and saw 90% of the 141 companies involved keep the system post-trial.
- Britain's biggest pharma company AstraZeneca pledged $50 billion worth of US spending by 2030, as industry tariffs loom.
- Paramount reportedly locked down a deal for the global streaming rights of "South Park," costing the company a whopping $1.5 billion over five years.
- Crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who founded the Tron blockchain, will be one of six passengers on the next Blue Origin space tourism flight — four years after he paid $28 million for a seat.
- One in five Gen Z workers said their degree didn't contribute to their career, while 23% said they regret going to college more broadly, per a new survey.
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- The Straits Times explores Singapore's 60-year history in 60 objects.
- Pew Research Center charts how Google AI summaries have led to shorter browsing and fewer link clicks.
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Off the charts: Just like the two before it, the third and final season of Squid Game had American viewers rushing to Google to work out what? [Answer below]. |
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