ReportWire

Tag: paper

  • Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, one of the nation’s oldest newspapers, shuttering

    The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will be shutting down its operations with a final edition slated for May 3, the newspaper’s owner, Block Communications, announced Wednesday.”We deeply regret the impact this decision will have on Pittsburgh and the surrounding region,” the announcement states.The Post-Gazette is the largest newspaper representing the Pittsburgh metropolitan area and traces its roots to 1786, forming under its current name in 1927.Block Communications said the closure comes after losing “more than $350 million in cash operating the Post-Gazette” over the past 20 years. In addition, Pittsburghsister station WTAE reports that they cited a November decision that ruled in favor of the paper’s union, restoring the terms of its 2014-17 contract. Workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh had been on strike for more than three years, then the longest active strike in the country.On Wednesday morning, the Post-Gazette’s publisher asked a court to freeze an order requiring the company to change its health insurance for union workers. Shortly after they were denied, the announcement came that the newspaper would close.In the announcement on Wednesday, Block Communications said the decision would require them to work under a contract that was “outdated and inflexible operational practices unsuited for today’s local journalism.””We deeply regret the impact this decision will have on Pittsburgh and the surrounding region,” the announcement stated.The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh released a statement about the Post-Gazette shutdown, saying in part, “Instead of simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh.”Post-Gazette staff learned about the closure during a Zoom meeting. In the video, which Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 has seen, the president of Block Communications called it extremely difficult news as she made the virtual announcement that will end nearly two centuries of the P-G in Pittsburgh.”This is a seismic change for the entire region,” said Andrew Conte, managing director of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University. “We often talk about the local news crisis as a problem of the media, but really, it’s a crisis for all of us. It’s a community challenge because it affects how people interact with local news and information, and when something as large as the Post-Gazette goes away, it creates a huge void.”Conte worked as a journalist in the Pittsburgh area for decades. Like many Pittsburghers, he has watched the yearslong battle between Post-Gazette journalists and Block Communications and the recent end to a three-year strike.”People have been thinking about what it would mean to lose the Post-Gazette for a long time,” he said. “But when it actually happened today, it felt like a gut punch.”The Post-Gazette started out in 1786 as a weekly called The Pittsburgh Gazette and was the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains. As one of its first major stories, the Gazette published the newly adopted Constitution of the United States.Pittsburgh is located in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. County Executive Sara Innamorato called the decision to close “a major loss” for the area.”I’m deeply worried about the public’s ability to access trustworthy and fact-checked information at a time when misinformation is running rampant online,” she said in a statement.It is one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the United States.Conte said it’s tough news for the journalists losing their jobs, as well as the community.”The real challenge is the work that journalists do that is accurate, objective, relevant to lots of people, that trained people are going out and asking these questions and finding out what’s going on and telling people, and that’s what’s being lost here is that we have fewer people doing that work,” he said.Announcement follows Supreme Court denial of bid to halt order Also on Jan. 7, 2026, the Supreme Court denied the Post-Gazette’s request to freeze a temporary injunction that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit had issued more than nine months ago. In a November 2025 decision, the appeals court held that the company had bargained in bad faith and improperly declared an impasse in the bargaining process. It ordered the company to comply with remedies ordered by the National Labor Relations Board.PG Publishing Co. filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court to stay the order in response. In the Jan. 7 decision, which vacated a Dec. 22 stay from Justice Samuel Alito’s that had paused the 3rd Circuit’s injunction, justices did not explain their reasoning, Bloomberg Law reported.Second Pittsburgh paper to announce closing in one weekBlock Communications is the same company that owned the Pittsburgh City Paper, a free alt-weekly that announced it was closing on Dec. 31, 2025, after 34 years serving the city.In a statement to sister station WTAE’s news partners at the Trib, owner Block Communications said, in part, “The City Paper business model has not reached a level of financial performance that allows Block Communications to continue operating it responsibly.”Block Communications also owns The Blade, a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.

    PITTSBURGH —

    The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will be shutting down its operations with a final edition slated for May 3, the newspaper’s owner, Block Communications, announced Wednesday.

    “We deeply regret the impact this decision will have on Pittsburgh and the surrounding region,” the announcement states.

    The Post-Gazette is the largest newspaper representing the Pittsburgh metropolitan area and traces its roots to 1786, forming under its current name in 1927.

    Block Communications said the closure comes after losing “more than $350 million in cash operating the Post-Gazette” over the past 20 years. In addition, Pittsburghsister station WTAE reports that they cited a November decision that ruled in favor of the paper’s union, restoring the terms of its 2014-17 contract. Workers represented by the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh had been on strike for more than three years, then the longest active strike in the country.

    On Wednesday morning, the Post-Gazette’s publisher asked a court to freeze an order requiring the company to change its health insurance for union workers. Shortly after they were denied, the announcement came that the newspaper would close.

    In the announcement on Wednesday, Block Communications said the decision would require them to work under a contract that was “outdated and inflexible operational practices unsuited for today’s local journalism.”

    “We deeply regret the impact this decision will have on Pittsburgh and the surrounding region,” the announcement stated.

    The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh released a statement about the Post-Gazette shutdown, saying in part, “Instead of simply following the law, the owners chose to punish local journalists and the city of Pittsburgh.”

    Post-Gazette staff learned about the closure during a Zoom meeting. In the video, which Pittsburgh’s Action News 4 has seen, the president of Block Communications called it extremely difficult news as she made the virtual announcement that will end nearly two centuries of the P-G in Pittsburgh.

    “This is a seismic change for the entire region,” said Andrew Conte, managing director of the Center for Media Innovation at Point Park University. “We often talk about the local news crisis as a problem of the media, but really, it’s a crisis for all of us. It’s a community challenge because it affects how people interact with local news and information, and when something as large as the Post-Gazette goes away, it creates a huge void.”

    Conte worked as a journalist in the Pittsburgh area for decades. Like many Pittsburghers, he has watched the yearslong battle between Post-Gazette journalists and Block Communications and the recent end to a three-year strike.

    “People have been thinking about what it would mean to lose the Post-Gazette for a long time,” he said. “But when it actually happened today, it felt like a gut punch.”

    The Post-Gazette started out in 1786 as a weekly called The Pittsburgh Gazette and was the first newspaper published west of the Allegheny Mountains. As one of its first major stories, the Gazette published the newly adopted Constitution of the United States.

    Pittsburgh is located in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. County Executive Sara Innamorato called the decision to close “a major loss” for the area.

    “I’m deeply worried about the public’s ability to access trustworthy and fact-checked information at a time when misinformation is running rampant online,” she said in a statement.

    It is one of the oldest continuously published newspapers in the United States.

    Conte said it’s tough news for the journalists losing their jobs, as well as the community.

    “The real challenge is the work that journalists do that is accurate, objective, relevant to lots of people, that trained people are going out and asking these questions and finding out what’s going on and telling people, and that’s what’s being lost here is that we have fewer people doing that work,” he said.

    Announcement follows Supreme Court denial of bid to halt order

    Also on Jan. 7, 2026, the Supreme Court denied the Post-Gazette’s request to freeze a temporary injunction that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit had issued more than nine months ago.

    In a November 2025 decision, the appeals court held that the company had bargained in bad faith and improperly declared an impasse in the bargaining process. It ordered the company to comply with remedies ordered by the National Labor Relations Board.

    PG Publishing Co. filed an emergency motion with the Supreme Court to stay the order in response.

    In the Jan. 7 decision, which vacated a Dec. 22 stay from Justice Samuel Alito’s that had paused the 3rd Circuit’s injunction, justices did not explain their reasoning, Bloomberg Law reported.

    Second Pittsburgh paper to announce closing in one week

    Block Communications is the same company that owned the Pittsburgh City Paper, a free alt-weekly that announced it was closing on Dec. 31, 2025, after 34 years serving the city.

    In a statement to sister station WTAE’s news partners at the Trib, owner Block Communications said, in part, “The City Paper business model has not reached a level of financial performance that allows Block Communications to continue operating it responsibly.”

    Block Communications also owns The Blade, a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.

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  • Recycling Christmas Cards Into Gift Tags – Garden Therapy

    Recycling Christmas cards into gift tags is such a quick and easy project. It’s simple, reduces waste, and is a great way to save the thoughtful holiday cards you were lucky enough to receive.

    Materials

    Make It!

    1. Gather all your pretty Christmas cards and recycle any parts with handwritten or personalized sentiments.

    Christmas Card Recycling ProjectChristmas Card Recycling Project

    2. If you have a tag punch, this next step will take mere minutes. Just position, punch, and ta-da! You have a gift tag. This would also work with round or flower-shaped punches, or if you don’t have any of those, you can use scissors.

    I must say that I use my punch far more than I thought I would. I can recycle tissue boxes, packaging, and other decorative card stock into pretty tags that are handy with all the handmade stuff I give away.

    Recycling Christmas Cards with Tag PunchRecycling Christmas Cards with Tag Punch

    3. For some cards, you may be able to get a bunch of tags…

    Make Your Cards into Gift TagsMake Your Cards into Gift Tags

    …others may only have one image that will work…

    Recycling Holiday Cards into Gift TagsRecycling Holiday Cards into Gift Tags

    …and with some, you can use the sentiment as long as it fits well in the area.

    Christmas Card Recycling IdeaChristmas Card Recycling Idea

    4. The final step is to punch a hole in the top of each tag. Thread some baker’s twine, garden twine, or ribbon to add it to your gift.

    Evergreen Clipping Paper Gift Tag with TwineEvergreen Clipping Paper Gift Tag with Twine

    You can now store them away until next year, when you unpack the tags and memories of this holiday season.

    Punch a hole in the gift tagsPunch a hole in the gift tags

    More Crafty Christmas Projects

    Stephanie Rose

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  • German Economy Shows Signs of Revival

    The German economy may be showing signs of a life after more than half a decade of stagnation.

    Europe’s largest economy has suffered a series of recent blows, including a surge in energy costs after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, higher tariffs on its exports to the U.S and fierce competition from China in key sectors such as automobiles.

    Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

    Don Nico Forbes

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  • The Remarkable Paper Pro Move Might Finally Be the Perfect Productivity Device

    I am a longtime fan of ink on paper, at least, as far as taking notes and staying organized is concerned. I’ve written before that I prefer the feel and friction involved with using a notebook for ideas and to-do lists.

    I’ve tried digital versions of this process, including the Paperlike screen protector on my iPad Pro. Still, none of them have ever perfectly recreated the experience of writing with a real pen or pencil on real paper.

    Recently, however, Remarkable announced the Remarkable Paper Pro Move, which is a very long name for a small color e-ink tablet. I’d previously used the larger version, known as the Paper Pro, but had a hard time figuring out how to fit it into my life. It was just too big.

    There’s a trade-off, of course. If I’m going to carry around something this large, it has to offer me more value than the cost associated with its size or weight. With the larger Paper Pro, I haven’t been able to balance out that equation.

    With the smaller version, however, suddenly everything made sense. In fact, after using it for a few months, I’m starting to think it might just be the perfect productivity device.

    To be fair, it’s not going to be for everyone. If you’re the kind of person who just uses your email inbox as your main to-do list, this probably isn’t going to work for you. But, if you’re a handwritten list kind of person, there are four reasons you might want to check out the Paper Pro move:

    1. It’s close enough

    To be fair, this still isn’t like writing on real paper. But the Paper Pro Move is close enough to that experience that I’m willing to use it regularly. It’s not perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. It just has to be comfortable, and it is. There’s enough friction in the experience that it doesn’t feel like you’re writing on a device.

    And, the color e-ink screen is good. It’s definitely slower than the Remarkable 2, but I think that’s just physics, and a function of how they work. Like the larger Paper Pro, having color probably is what makes it slower, but I think the trade off is worth it in terms of functionality.

    2. It’s small

    The only real objection I had to the full-size Paper Pro is that it was just too big to be something I wanted to carry with me all the time. I don’t want another device that’s basically the size of my laptop or iPad.

    The Paper Pro Move, however, is small enough that it fits better in my workflow and my carry bag. It’s right in the sweet spot between small enough to carry and big enough to write on without feeling cramped.

    That said, it was too small for most of the planner templates I was used to on the bigger version. Thankfully, there’s a pretty active network of people making templates and it didn’t take long at all to find some specifically designed for the Paper Pro Move.

    3. It’s infinity notebooks

    I guess it’s technically not “infinity,” so to speak. The Paper Pro Move has 64GB of internal storage, which the company says is enough for 100,000 pages of PDF documents. That’s about 83 years’ worth of notebooks if you go through one a month. I assume the backlight will die and the battery will stop holding a charge long before you’ll ever fill up the device’s storage.

    The reality is that having all of the notes you take with you all the time is really the reason you would use something like the Remarkable instead of just writing on paper. There’s something very nice about being able to go back to meetings or notes from months ago without having to figure out which notebook I put them in.

    4. There are no distractions

    Lastly, the killer feature is that the Paper Pro Move has zero distractions. There are no notifications or apps. There’s nothing begging for your attention except whatever you’re working on. That makes it the perfect device for thinking, organizing, and working.

    To be honest, I don’t think the Paper Pro Move can ever replace the joy that comes from writing with a pen on paper, but it does about as a good a job as I think is possible at recreating that experience. The real question is whether the benefits from using a digital device are worth it. In this case, I think the answer is yes.

    Obviously, this is a premium device, which means it comes with a pretty big price tag. With a Marker Plus and a Folio, it’ll cost you $570. You can buy a pen and paper notebook for like, what, $10? You can get a lot of pens and notebooks for the price of this digital version.

    That means it’s definitely not for everyone, and that’s okay. Most people probably shouldn’t spend $570 on a digital notebook, especially if you read this far and still aren’t sure how you’d possibly use this in your life. On the other hand, if you’re a fan of notebooks and pens, and you use both to take notes and organize your ideas, there’s no question this might just be the best productivity device yet.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

    Jason Aten

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  • The Best Paper Planners Our Editors Use to Organize Their Lives

    There’s nothing like the feeling of a brand-new planner. As the new school year kicks off, we’ve found the best planners to deliver that satisfying rush of a fresh start and a blank page. The sensation of writing things down not only feels satisfying but helps improve retention, and paper planners give a sense of delight in a world that can feel bleak.

    A great planner will help you keep your life on track, but that means something different for everyone—do you need room for multiple to-do lists? Places to track all your calls and meetings that week? Open space for whatever strikes your fancy? From daily and weekly planners to planners designed for a specific type of person, here are all of our favorite planners that we’ve tried and tested. Our overall favorite weekly planner is Plum Paper’s A5 Vertical Priorities Planner ($38), which you can customize to start anytime of year and to fit all your needs. If you’re more of a daily planner, try the Day Designer ($68) or the Hobonichi Techo ($40). We’ve also got picks for monthly planners, students, crazy list-makers, and more below. This is a great time of year to pick up your mid-year planners designed for the school year, or customize a planner like the Agendio or Roterunner to start at your preferred month.

    Once you find your perfect planner, don’t forget to check out other great gear from stories in our Home Office directory, from the best digital notebooks and computer monitors to everything you need for your work-from-home setup.

    Updated August 2025: We’ve added planners from Papier and Moleskine to More Planners We Like, and a new FAQs section.

    Table of Contents

    Our Favorite Planners

    From weekly and daily planners to planners for specific use cases (and even a completely custom planner!), here are all the top planners we recommend buying.

    • Photograph: Nena Farrell

    • Courtesy of Plum Paper

    If I only bought one planner, this would be the one. The Plum Paper A5 Planner has the perfect amount of customizability without feeling like I have to do too much work to create it, and has a lot of beautiful covers and color options to choose from. I personally love the Vertical Priorities layout, which I customized to include a priority section for my son, but you can choose from other layouts—there are 10 different types of layouts, going from vertical and horizontal to student and goal setting, then anywhere from two to four types of layouts within each type. You also choose from a huge variety of covers that you can customize with things like your name or the year, and choose from a huge range of add-ons like monthly workout summaries, baby tracking pages, and so much more.

    The A5 size is easy to use and tote around wherever I want, and you can have the planner start on any month you wish—great for if you want an annual planner suddenly in March or July without needing to skip all those extra months. You’ll find a two-sided folder in the back, which I usually use for stickers and urgent paperwork I need to handle. Speaking of stickers, I love Plum Paper’s chic sticker sets ($5+) that range from matching their add-on pages to cute seasonal stickers, and that I can make my own custom stickers on Plum Paper’s website.

    Another Great Weekly Planner

    Erin Condren LifePlanner

    Photograph: Amazon

    Erin Condren

    Coiled Weekly LifePlanner

    If Plum Planner’s designs aren’t quite for you, then explore the Erin Condren LifePlanner (ECLP for short). It’s one of the most popular for weekly-spread enthusiasts, with tons of layouts to choose from and room for notes or doodles. You can customize it similarly to the Plum Planner above, though it doesn’t have quite as many options for the pages you can add. You’ll choose the cover first, then fill it with your desired layout from the four options: hourly; horizontal; or our favorite, vertical. Then choose one of the three color schemes and a coil color, and add any cover customizations you want (like your name or a quote) to complete your planner.

    There are cheaper Erin Condren planners you can find at Target, but you can’t customize them like you would on Erin Condren’s website. I also personally prefer the cover design options and colors on Plum Paper, but it’s worth checking out both to see which one best suits your fancy.

    • Photograph: Nena Farrell

    • Courtesy of Day Designer

    Day Designer

    Daily Planner

    Daily planners give you an entire page for each day, and the Day Designer is great for anyone who wants space for both a full calendar and a nice long to-do list for each day. The schedule half of the page goes from 5 am to 9 pm, giving you plenty of room to schedule meetings, plan workouts, or block out client appointments. The other half has a long to-do list you can fill in, plus the top of the page has a space for the three most important things, any due dates, and dinner.

    It’s a bit on the bulky side, since there’s a page for every single day of the year along with monthly spreads, but it’s not so big that you can’t bring it in a spacious backpack or tote bag. I also like that it’s not too tall, with a square A5 design, but still has plenty of room for a nice long to-do list.

    A Minimalist Daily Planner

    Hobonichi Techo Planner

    Photograph: Amazon

    Several WIRED staffers recommend the Hobonichi Techo (Japanese for “planner”). WIRED reviewer Adrienne So says it’s the perfect size—small enough to fit in a bag and hold information but also able to lie flat on a desk. There is a monthly overview and then a page for each day, along with a quote that manages to be thought-provoking without being too trite. The cover is a distinctive black, stamped with gold foil and it comes with a wide variety of cute accessories. —Medea Giordano

    • Photograph: Kat Merck

    • Courtesy of Big A## Planner

    Big A## Planner

    The Mid-Year Big A## Planner

    Not surprisingly, given the name, there’s nothing discreet about this planner. With its bright-blue cardstock cover and 11- by-14-inch profile too big to fit in any purse or small bag, this is for people who live—or plan to live—large. The companion to motivational speaker and entrepreneur Jesse Itzler’s Big A## Calendar (as seen in our Gift Ideas for People Who Work From Home), this spiral-bound “planner for highly visual people” depicts each month in its entirety across a two-page spread, with oversized 2.5- by 2.5-inch squares for each day. Motivational quotes top each page (sample: “To do exceptional things, put yourself in exceptional situations”), and the back of the planner contains a goal-tracker version of the Big A## Calendar—every day of the year at a glance.

    There are five lined pages for notes, a running-pace chart should you find yourself overcome with a sudden burst of energy, and a Year in Review worksheet with boxes for keeping track of year highlights such as “favorite new music,” new things I tried,” and “career milestones.” If sudden inspiration strikes that needs to be shared, there’s a 300-square-inch dry-erase board in the back that can be propped up for impromptu meetings or demonstrations. I feel more energized just looking at it. I do wish the days of the week were on one page instead of across both, so I could keep it open folded in half on my desk (when opened, its footprint sprawls just under 2 feet wide—a significant amount of desk real estate), but as someone who takes copious handwritten notes, it’s a worthy trade-off for me for the sheer amount of daily writing space. —Kat Merck

    • Photograph: Nena Farrell

    • Courtesy of Agendio

    Agendio

    Customizable Planner

    If you can’t seem to find the right planner for you, it might be time to design your own. That sounds intimidating, but Agendio makes it pretty easy with its fully custom planners, allowing you to choose from premade pages or designing your own (with some limitations—it’s not as open-ended as a program like Canva) to create the perfect monthly, weekly, and daily spreads. You can also design your own additional pages, like workout trackers or reading lists, that you can either add for each month or to the end of the planner.

    There’s both a Pro designer, which I used to create fully custom pages and a specific layout, and a Classic designer, which is much simpler and lets you choose from premade pages. I really liked the cover options, and the default cover size (as long as you don’t add too many pages) will wrap around the planner’s coil to make it look like a sleek folder and protect the binding. It’s a great option if you tend to destroy things in your bag. It can easily become pricey with everything you can add, but it’s a really satisfying feeling to create your perfect planner and have it arrive at your front door, printed and bound.

    • Photograph: Nena Farrell

    • Courtesy of BanDo

    There are a lot of quirky planners, but Ban.do is one of the most fun options that’s in just about everyone’s budget. From a page to track the books you read to an entire page dedicated to my astrological birth chart, it’s hard to resist the fun that Ban.do’s planners offer. The weekly layout has enough room for daily planning, and you’ll get fun extras like monthly meal planning and three pages of included stickers. There are also undated ($25) versions if you want full date flexibility.

    Great for Lists and Doodles

    • Photograph: Nena Farrell

    • Courtesy of Roterunner

    Roterunner

    Purpose Planner B5

    This has become my new go-to planner, because I am notorious for multiple lists. Especially as a mom, there’s often one list for work, one list for home and parenting tasks, plus other random lists like which workout outfits I want to wear this week and a packing list for a trip I won’t take for a month. I need a lot of room to corral my ideas, and the Purpose Planner actually has room for it all. The weekly spread includes five to-do list areas, from work to home and projects and stuff to buy, plus smaller checklists for each day and plenty of space to write in my schedule. Not only that, but there are two full dotted pages after each weekly spread for me to doodle, brainstorm, and write more lists all over for that specific week. The monthly spread has six lists, plus six sections to reflect on when the month ends.

    It’s a six-month, undated planner, so you can pick it up any time of the year and start using it. You do need to sit down and write in things like the months and dates, but I found that fun and satisfying to do. I also liked adding some color coding with highlighters to add a little fun to the pages. There are also some fun pages in the front to reflect and plan for your roles in life, goals you want to achieve, and books you want to read. I love the massive B5 size since it’s finally enough space for me, but there’s also a smaller A5 ($25) size.

    • Photograph: Nena Farrell

    • Courtesy of The Happy Planner

    The Happy Planner

    2025 Planners

    The Happy Planner has a huge range of planners, with tons of designs ranging from a vertical layout to a large dashboard to even a design made for work. There’s lots of space in these spacious planners, but the design seems like it would be perfect for students, whether they’re full-time or just taking classes in the evenings or after work. The divider pages are cute and sometimes include phrases and quotes, but definitely have a youthful feel to them.

    You can choose between Classic, Skinny Classic, Mini, or Big sizes, and dated or undated pages. There are daily planners, ones tailored to teachers and students, among many others. The unique binding design makes it easy to take pages out or add them back in, and you can also get extension packs to add a few more months or to keep track of things like your budget and fitness goals.

    More Planners We Like

    While these aren’t our top picks, these are still great options to use as a planner.

    • At-A-Glance Simplified by Emily Ley Weekly Monthly Organizer Set for $91: This is a cute organizer set that comes with a refillable binder, planner pages for all of 2025, interior pockets, and even a little interior zip pouch. It’s also the right size for A4 paper if you wanted to add your own paper or pages to this chic little binder. It’s a really cute set, but I found it a little small for my liking. If you’re not a massive to-do list person, this could be a good fit for you.
    • Bright Day Kids Daily Checklist for $13: This was our planner pick for kids, but it’s no longer available. We’re hoping it returns since we liked how included to-dos like brushing teeth and making the bed, with extra lines for items to be written in, and could hold up to rough treatment in the school backpack.
    • Be Rooted Academic Planner for $16: This is a weekly planner with about a paragraph of space for each day, with an entire week spanning two pages at a time. It includes some stickers in the front, plus some intention-setting sections for each month. What’s especially cool is that Be Rooted is a female-owned small business making paper planners and accessories (like these pen sets), plus other lifestyle goods like candles and wall calendars.
    • Blue Sky Weekly Planner for $15: Several members of our team like Blue Sky. Its affordable planners give you space to jot down tasks without cluttering up the page. They’re also a good size—much easier to tote around than some on this list. As with the Happy Planner, you can find different layouts, sizes, and formats to suit you, and there’s a collaboration with Day Designer, another favorite of ours. —Medea Giordano
    • Blue Sky Monthly Planner for $10: Blue Sky’s Monthly Planners have a different layout than the weekly, where each day of the month has a few lines for jotting down multiple bullet points, and there’s a notes section for anything that would require more writing room. The yearly overview lets you track from an eagle-eyed perspective. It’s the smallest monthly planner we’ve tried, with 10-by-8-inch pages, but incredibly affordable.
    • Brass Monkey Undated Standard Planner for $11: This planner has a ton of fun squeezed into its pages, with things like pop culture birthdays and on this day notes. It’s undated in the sense that it isn’t tied to a year or a weekday, but you’ll get all the days of the month already in there, and you can fill in the year yourself and check off the day of the week instead to make it align with the current date. It’s a little small for my use, but everyone I’ve showed it to has been interested in it for its quirky additions.
    • Laurel Denise Horizontal Weekly Edition for $59: I’ve never seen a planner designed like this. It’s wider than a traditional planner, and the left side is for laying out the month—it’s undated—while the right has a spot for the month’s to-dos and a dotted area for whatever else. In the middle are five half-pages for organizing each specific week. You turn the week page and still get to see everything else you already wrote for the month. It’s an interesting planner, but I struggled to use it with the small daily area.
    • Levenger Circa smartPlanner Weekly Agenda for $60: This is another solid weekly planner with little frills. If you just need lines and days, this is your match. The brand also sells a leather folio for the planner, which looks very professional but is pricey.
    • Moleskine Classic Weekly Planner for $19: This is another weekly planner, and it has a style that reminds me of the popular Hobonichi Techo and Muji planners. It’s easy to use and comes in multiple sizes: large ($19), XL ($31), and pocket ($12). The large size is 5 by 8 inches, similar to an A5 size, which I wouldn’t usually call large. I preferred the B5 style XL, since it gave me more room to write things down for each week.
    • My PA Business Planner for $49: The PA stands for personal assistant, but this planner is more than that—it doubles as both a planner and a full-on business plan workbook, helping growing entrepreneurs organize and plan their business plans, ranging from product pitches to social media strategy. The beginning of the book is dedicated to organizing your business plan, and then there’s weekly checklists and goal lists, plus space to track your water, exercise, and meditation. There’s also space at the end of the planner to brainstorm for the year ahead and some extra lined and graph pages for miscellaneous notes. It’s a hefty planner that works best for entrepreneurs with a product they’re selling, but the workbook pages and focused weekly spreads could help any kind of business owner. Plus, it comes in a handful of fun colors and looks nice enough to blend in on a bookshelf.
    • Papier Daily Productivity Planner for $35: Papier has incredible cover design options to match nearly any style or mood. For layouts, I like the undated Daily Productivity Planner best. Each week has a box per day, lines for notes, areas for three priorities, a long to-do list, and a habit tracker. Plus, there’s a meal planner and shopping list for every week. There are also a few pages dedicated to outlining each day’s schedule. I didn’t need these pages as much during my usual week, but people with rotating weekly schedules might appreciate it. Papier is also the only brand I found that lets you scroll through every single page before you buy. I’m so specific about what I like and need, this should be standard. —Medea Giordano
    • Papier Mid-Year Planner for $35: Papier’s Mid-Year Planner is a chic, simple weekly planner that comes with all the fun cover options Papier is known for. I liked this planner, but I prefer a larger weekly planner or a daily planner for this size, since it has lots of room for notes and daily to-do lists. Still, it’s a nice size if you want to write down meetings and a few to-dos for each day, and lets you map out your life from this summer to the next.
    • Papier Wellness Journal for $35: This is a great journal for building daily habits, and if you’re a fan of daily journaling à la The Five Minute Journal. It’s not technically a planner, but it is something you’d use daily and to plan out your day like a planner. The goal is to fill it out morning and night with your intentions for the day followed by the results, and it operates on the focus of six pillars: energy, mind, movement, nourishment, connection, and rest. It’s a lovely journal with a really nice way of looking at your day and how you spend your time, but I did find it easy to forget to do it both morning and day. It would be a great gift for someone you know wants more intentional goal-setting and reflection each day.
    • Passion Planner Weekly Planner for $45: This is my favorite weekly planner for mapping out the hours of my day. It doesn’t have as much room for to-do lists, but you do have a section for each week for a single personal and work to-do list, which I use for my primary projects, and some doodle space. I really love Passion Planner’s accessories, and how nice the pages feel to write on.
    • Studio Tigress Seasonal Planner for $18 (Per Season): These Seasonal Planners from Portland, Oregon-based Studio Tigress aren’t your standard planner. These are large individual sheets covering an entire three-month season, allowing you to have it pinned on a wall or lying across your desk for easy access. The 10-by-16-inch sheets are certainly bigger than most planners and aren’t easy to travel with, but rather serve as a handy at-a-glance look for your key goals, to-do items, events, and deadlines that you write down. There’re five undated weeks for each month, so you’ll have to check your digital calendar to confirm which dates are where, but that also means there’s plenty of room for each month to write down what’s coming up and extra notes if you need. There are 25 spots on the to-do list, and I liked using it for my main seasonal goals (like apple picking in the fall, seeing the zoo holiday lights in the winter) and major to-do items (like getting my car emissions checked and purchasing train tickets). While it can’t replace a weekly or daily planner if you like daily to-do lists, I loved using these sheets to get a birds-eye view of the upcoming season. —Nena Farrell

    Planner Alternatives

    Not everyone needs or wants a rigid planner. If you just need daily to-do lists or are a fan of bullet journals, consider getting a great notebook instead.

    planner

    Photograph: Amazon

    Former WIRED reviewer Jaina Grey opts for a plain lined notebook. After trying dozens, her favorite is the Midori MD Notebook with paper made from cotton pulp (just like money!). It comes in lined, unlined, or dot-grid. Grey says there’s just something meditative about turning over a blank page at the beginning of each week and carefully jotting down her schedule, plans, and workload. No missed days to make you feel guilty. Midori’s notebooks are designed to fit inside notebook or journal covers (which you can find all over Etsy). The pages are a subtle off-white and have a weight and texture that draws you in. The soft cotton paper of this notebook makes drawing, sketching, and plain old writing an absolute joy. —Medea Giordano

    index cards

    Photograph: Getty Images

    WIRED reviewer Scott Gilbertson says he doesn’t use a planner, but each day he writes down the handful of things he’s going to do on a single 3-by-5 index card. The index card with this to-do list lives in his pocket, along with a small notebook in which he jots down notes throughout the day—often the source of the following day’s to-do list. The notebook and index cards fit inside this very cool waxed canvas notebook cover. Gilbertson says he copied this system from one of the most successful people he has known, and after nearly 20 years, it’s still better for him than any other system he’s tried. It’s cheap, lightweight, and easy to manage. —Medea Giordano

    Planner Accessories

    planner and accessories

    Photograph: Getty Images

    Maybe all you need is paper and a good pen and you’re good to go. But we like to get creative. Stickers are a popular accessory, and they’re a delightful slippery slope. Once you make your first “spread” (a collection of themed stickers on a planner page, similar to a scrapbook), you will never go back. Etsy is the central hub of planner stickers. You can order printed stickers or buy digital files and print and cut them yourself. You can also opt for a full kit (an entire spread’s worth of stickers) or just the individual components you like the most.

    Nena Farrell

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  • We Journaled for Years to Find the Best Paper Notebooks and Journals

    We Journaled for Years to Find the Best Paper Notebooks and Journals

    Is there such a thing as the best notebook? Probably not. Notebooks are not a one-size-fits all commodity. If none of these quite tilt your pen, here are some general things to look for in a paper notebook.

    Paper quality: High-quality paper will improve your writing experience. That said, what constitutes high-quality paper depends a lot on your writing device. For example, heavy ink pens, like fountain pens, will require thicker paper to avoid ghosting (when the ink soaks through), while coarser paper might be better for sketching with a soft pencil. (Much of this depends on personal preference, too.) If you’re mainly jotting notes with a ballpoint pen, pretty much any paper will work.

    Size and shape: For writing, I like vertically-oriented notebooks, roughly A5 shape, but for sketching and watercolors I prefer landscape-oriented notebooks. I know people who like the exact opposite. You’ll have to find out what shape you like, but once you do you can narrow the field considerably. Also keep in mind that if you’re carrying a notebook around all day, weight matters. Everyone has their own sweet spot between page count, weight, and size. You’ll have to experiment to find what works for you.

    Binding style: This might seem obscure, but how a notebook lies when it is open is very important, and how a notebook lies is largely determined by the binding. For example, some people (especially left-handed writers) love lay-flat notebooks because they lie totally flat, making them easier to write in. Other people like spiral binding because you can fold the entire notebook in half, and it’s easy to tear out pages. Perfect-bound notebooks (the most common binding, think Moleskine) are much more sturdy than spiral bound but don’t lie flat, and it’s hard to tear out pages.

    Page ruling: There are four common types of ruling: lined, dotted, grid, and none. The ruling is mostly a matter of taste, though I find dot grid essential for some project planning, especially anything involving measurements (like woodworking projects, for instance), so I always have a dot grid notebook around. Dot grid is also a popular choice for keeping a bullet journal.

    Reusability: I’ve come to think of notebooks as two parts: the cover, and the pages. Notebooks with hard covers, like our top pick Leuchtturm1917, combine both in a single package, where softcover notebooks, like Field Notes or Moleskine Cahier notebooks, lend themselves to being slipped into an additional cover. What I like about keeping the two things separate is that my notebook always looks the same. The leather cover never changes, I just keep inserting new notebooks inside. There are covers for Leuchtturm notebooks, so you can do both if you want, but I find this makes the notebooks rather heavy.

    Scott Gilbertson

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  • Our Favorite Digital Notebooks and Smart Pens

    Our Favorite Digital Notebooks and Smart Pens

    Do you take a lot of notes? Whether you’re in school or working in a job that requires lots of jotting down ideas, you may opt for typing notes on a laptop, but physically writing something down helps you remember and learn more. Putting real pen to paper also just feels good. However, having a digital backup is convenient for on-the-go organization and studying.

    There are E Ink tablets, smart pens, and notebooks made to save digital files of your handwritten notes or drawings. You can save files as PDFs, images, and Word Docs, or transcribe them to a text file in Google Docs to make all your notes searchable. Some of these devices can record too, which is great for lectures and interviews. If your notes need an upgrade, we recommend giving these a try. Be sure to check out our Best Dorm Essentials guide, as well as our Best Tablets, Best Laptop Backpacks, and Best Totes guides.

    Updated April 2024: We’ve added the Boox Note Air3 C and Supernote Nomad as new picks. We’ve also added notes about Kobo’s newest e-reader with writing capabilities, the Kobo Libra Colour.

    Medea Giordano, Nena Farrell

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  • Make Your Own Custom Sticky Notes with the Memo X

    Make Your Own Custom Sticky Notes with the Memo X

    Zenlet’s Memo X is unique gadget that turns any paper you want into removable sticky notes. It combines cutting and adhesive application into a single step. Slide a sheet of paper into its slot, press down, and in a second you’ll have a custom sticky note in one of three sizes. A $4 roll of tape makes about 250 notes.

    Crowdfunded projects pose a degree of risk for buyers, so be sure to do your research before paying your hard-earned money.

    Paul Strauss

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  • Ex-L.A. Times publisher Richard T. 'Dick' Schlosberg III, who presided over paper in its heyday, dies

    Ex-L.A. Times publisher Richard T. 'Dick' Schlosberg III, who presided over paper in its heyday, dies

    Former Times publisher Richard T. “Dick” Schlosberg III, who led the newspaper during an era that saw double-digit profits and the emergence of the internet, which would eventually decimate the industry, died Wednesday in San Antonio. He was 79.

    The cause was brain cancer, according to his son, Dr. Richard T. Schlosberg IV.

    Schlosberg spent a decade at The Times, arriving from the Denver Post in 1988 to serve as president and retiring as publisher in 1997. The paper was then the flagship of the Chandler family’s Times-Mirror chain and the nation’s second-largest metropolitan paper with a newsroom of 1,500 journalists and a circulation that topped 1 million. Reporters flew first class and Picasso lithographs adorned the walls of an executive dining room.

    Schlosberg in an undated photo. He graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy.

    (Schlosberg family)

    “There are no bad days as publisher of the L.A. Times,” Schlosberg said in 1997. “There are good days and great days.”

    To celebrate blockbuster ad revenues in the mid-1990s, The Times rented out the House of Blues on the Sunset Strip and hired the Laker Girls to perform. Schlosberg and then executive editor Shelby Coffey performed “Wild Thing” backed by a band.

    “We weren’t without our troubles at various times and having to cut and squeeze, but certainly looking back on it… it was quite a high point,” Coffey said.

    In one indication of the prestige afforded Times brass in that era, actor and singer Barbra Streisand invited Coffey and Schlosberg and their wives to her home for a dinner with actor Warren Beatty, which the former editor recalled as “a pleasant evening.”

    Three men in dark suits stand together and talk.

    Then Los Angeles Times publisher Richard T. Schlosberg, left, with David Laventhol, center, and President Clinton in 1994.

    (Los Angeles Times History Center)

    Meanwhile, the clouds gathered in Silicon Valley. Harry Chandler, then heading up business development, traveled to Palo Alto in 1995 to meet two Stanford graduates, David Filo and Jerry Yang, seeking funding for a new tech company.

    On his return, he told Schlosberg and Coffey: “I need an hour to tell you what the internet is and why we should buy a company called Yahoo.”

    The Times offered $1.6 million for about half the nascent company — an investment that would have drastically altered the newspaper’s history — but the Yahoo founders backed out.

    Schlosberg was known for showing consideration to rank and file employees. He banned smoking in the Denver newsroom in the 1980s, citing the danger to nonsmokers, his son recalled, and in L.A., he sought out input for big decisions from low-level employees.

    Richard T. Schlosberg III portrait

    Schlosberg in 1996.

    (Lee Salem Photography)

    “He was a person who would always go to the source of information. He didn’t go through a typical chain of command in a way,” said Dickson Louie, who worked under him at The Times.

    During Schlosberg’s tenure, The Times won Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of the 1992 L.A. riots and the 1994 Northridge earthquake and was a Pulitzer finalist nine times.

    The son of a World War II pilot, Schlosberg was born in 1944 in Ardmore, Okla., and graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy. He served two tours of duty in Vietnam, where he flew more than 200 combat support missions, according to an obituary in the San Antonio Report. He received an MBA from Harvard before beginning a newspaper career.

    Following his retirement from The Times, he served as CEO of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Los Altos-based charity set up by the co-founder of Hewlett-Packard and his wife.

    He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Kathy, his son and his daughter Deb Rich Herczeg, as well as five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

    After he left The Times, Schlosberg followed with concern as the paper cycled through different owners and many rounds of layoffs. Then-parent company Tribune filed for bankruptcy in 2008 and the newsroom dwindled below 400 journalists before the Soon-Shiong family returned the paper to local ownership in 2018.

    Schlosberg and four others formed a committee to advocate for retired Times-Mirror employees and spent 15 years fighting for money due them under deferred compensation plans.

    “It was on principle,” said former Times general counsel William Niese, who also worked on the committee. “Dick Schlosberg was a very wealthy man and he didn’t need to do it at all.”

    Employees eventually collected about a third of what was owed them through the bankruptcy proceedings, Niese said.

    Harriet Ryan

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  • What to expect as Netflix, Disney and other big streaming names shift strategy

    What to expect as Netflix, Disney and other big streaming names shift strategy

    Streaming customers are likely to see more familiar faces and less megabudget content in the coming year.

    Shifting consumer tastes and corporate strategies portend changes in programming, with artificial intelligence looming in the background, as major streaming services consider how to use technology and new forms of programming without escalating annual multibillion-dollar content budgets.

    “The big quandary is, how do we make [services] profitable? Things have shifted so dramatically and so quickly in how people consume,” Cole Strain, head of research and development at Samba TV, which tracks viewership of shows, said in an interview. “The streamers that find out what consumers truly want — they win.”

    Streaming services are facing some big choices, noted Jacqueline Corbelli, CEO of software company BrightLine. “The cost of the content and the length of the content war will force them to make some major decisions. They are trying to figure it out,” she said in an interview.

    “Great content has to be paid for, and investors want to see an increasingly efficient and profitable business,” she said, adding: “Right now the economics of these are at odds with one another.”

    This year’s prolonged Hollywood strikes, the prevalence of up-close-and-personal sports documentaries and the increased licensing of older cable-TV shows are the most tangible evidence so far of how content is evolving. Throw in cost-cutting, and customers of services like Netflix Inc.
    NFLX,
    +0.28%    ,
    Walt Disney Co.’s
    DIS,
    -1.33%
    Disney+ and Hulu, and Amazon.com Inc.’s
    AMZN,
    +1.41%
    Prime Video are looking at a vastly different content landscape.

    What’s at stake? Streaming’s big guns continue to spend lavishly in the pursuit of engagement, which is the single most important metric in media. During its third-quarter earnings calls, Netflix said it would spend $17 billion on content in 2024, while Disney pledged $25 billion, including sports rights.

    “‘I think when it comes to creativity, quality is critical, of course, and quantity in many ways can destroy quality.’”


    — Disney CEO Bob Iger

    Complicating matters and raising the urgency is the pressure, particularly at Disney, to cut costs. The very future of blockbuster movies is also in doubt in the wake of box-office misfires such as “Wish,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and the latest Marvel entries, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” and “The Marvels.”

    “One of the reasons I believe it’s fallen off a bit is that we were making too much,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said at a recent employee town hall meeting in New York City. “I think when it comes to creativity, quality is critical, of course, and quantity in many ways can destroy quality. Storytelling, obviously, is the core of what we do as a company.”

    Also read: Disney CEO Bob Iger walks back comments about asset sales

    Speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit last week, Iger acknowledged that “the movie business is changing. Box office is about 75% of what it was pre-COVID.” Noting the $7 monthly fee for a Disney+ subscription, he said the experience of viewing content from home on large TV screens is both more convenient and less expensive than going to the movie theater.

    Iger’s task is significantly more fraught than those faced by his rivals. He is in the midst of a turnaround at Disney aimed at making streaming profitable and is simultaneously fending off yet another proxy fight from activist investor Nelson Peltz.

    Part of Iger’s plan is to slash costs. Of the $7.5 billion Disney intends to save in 2024, $4.5 billion will come out of the content budget. Previously, the company was aiming at a $3 billion content cut out of a total annual reduction of $5.5 billion. Disney plans to spend $25 billion on content in 2024, down from $27.2 billion in 2023 and a record $29.9 billion in 2022.

    Read more: Bob Iger: ‘I was not seeking to return’ as Disney CEO

    What streamers have done so far hews closely to the classic TV model of producing original movies and series, broadcasting live sporting events and throwing in licensed content, or syndication. They’ve also displayed a willingness to place ads on their services after vowing not to (in the case of Netflix) and have managed to mitigate spending on pricey sports rights with behind-the-scenes content.

    Most prominently, Netflix has licensed older shows like USA Networks’ “Suits,” reintroducing the cast, including a then-unknown Meghan Markle, to solid viewership. “As the competitive environment evolves, we may have increased opportunities to license more hit titles to complement our original programming,” Netflix said in its third-quarter earnings statement. 

    During the company’s earnings call in October, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos pointed to the historic streaming success of “Suits.” “This continues to be important for us to add a lot of breadth of storytelling,” he said. “Our consumers have a wide range of tastes, and we can’t make everything, but we can help you find just about anything. That’s really the strength.”

    The success of “Suits” and of original sports programming, among several tweaks, indicates that consumers like what they see so far. Streaming additions at Netflix and Disney were significant — 8.76 million and nearly 7 million, respectively — during the recently completed third calendar quarter.

    Read more: Netflix’s stock jumps more than 10% on huge spike in subscribers, price hikes

    “There exist a lot of popular, good shows that people hadn’t seen before. HBO Max has licensed ‘Band of Brothers.’ ‘Yellowstone’ is on the CBS network after performing well on Paramount Global
    PARA,
    -2.76%
    and Comcast Corp.’s
    CMCSA,
    -3.41%
    Peacock,” Jon Giegengack, founder and principal of Hub Entertainment Research, said in an interview. “Consumers increasingly don’t care if a show is new, if they haven’t seen it before.”

    On the sports front, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have sidestepped expensive rights to live sporting events and instead produced docuseries such as Netflix’s “Quarterback” and “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” and Amazon’s “Coach Prime” and “Redefined: J.R. Smith.” Amazon also continues to air “NFL Thursday Night Football.”

    Competition for eyeballs is tight with so many suitors — from Alphabet Inc.’s
    GOOGL,
    +1.33%

    GOOG,
    +1.35%
    YouTube to TikTok, both of which are developing long-form content — and viewers face “too many streaming options,” said Brittany Slattery, chief marketing officer at OpenAP, an advertising platform founded by the owners of most of the large TV networks.

    “There is a high churn rate, because consumers keep popping in and out of services because they can’t afford all these services,” Slattery said in an interview.

    Also see: Here’s what’s worth streaming in December 2023: Not much new, yet still a lot to watch

    Mark Vena, CEO and principal analyst at SmarTech Research, sums up the typical customer experience: “There are too many services for streaming. I will buy service for a month, watch a movie and then cancel.”

    Using technology for a new experience

    Major streamers are pinning many of their hopes on technology as a way to entice viewers and expand beyond the traditional TV model they’ve adopted. Strategies include mobile gaming (Netflix), gambling (Disney’s ESPN Bet) and shoppable media (Amazon).

    The biggest near-term change would bring ESPN exclusively to streaming, perhaps as early as 2025, although big games would probably be simulcast on network TV to retain older viewers.

    “Technology will be a major impetus for being in the winning circle,” said Hunter Terry, head of connected TV at global data company Lotame, pointing to Amazon’s shoppable-media strategy during Prime Video’s broadcast of an NFL game on Black Friday.

    The NFL game, the first ever on a Friday, featured QR codes of Amazon ads for direct purchases via mobile devices and PCs, contributing greatly to what the e-commerce giant said was its best-ever sales day — 7.5% higher than Black Friday 2022. The game drew between 9.6 million and 10.8 million viewers, according to Nielsen and Amazon, making it the highest-rated show on Black Friday for young adults (18-34) and adults (18-49).

    And what of generative AI, a major flashpoint in the writers and actors strikes that roiled Hollywood for months earlier this year? Creators feared generative AI would be used to produce low- and middle-brow entertainment without the need for writers, actors or production crew.

    The technology is as intriguing to streamers as it is vexing. Full-blown adoption would rankle creators as well as customers. There are also limitations: AI-created content is lacking in humor and original thought, said David Parekh, CEO of SRI International, a leading research and development organization serving government and industry.

    “The pressing question is, who goes first among the streamers and risks getting blowback from studios and consumers?” said Rick Munarriz, a contributing analyst at the Motley Fool who covers streaming-service stocks. “You don’t want to offend people, but there are tools to create ideas” at little cost.

    AI and machine learning are already being used to mine data to find out what resonates with viewers.

    “It is very hard to produce successful content,” said Ron Gutman, CEO of Wurl, which helps streamers and publishers monetize and distribute content, and which was recently acquired by AppLovin Corp.
    APP,
    -0.80%
    for $430 million. “The market is so fragmented. The problem is connecting people to content.”

    Straight to streaming?

    Big-budget busts present another potential source of content, by salvaging unreleased movies, according to experts.

    The so-called dust-bin option is the natural successor to straight-to-video and straight-to-pay-per-view movies. There has been some precedent, with the release of Disney’s superhero hit “Black Widow” simultaneously on streaming and in theaters in May 2021.

    Will streaming services end up as the first stop for movies abruptly canceled before release? Candidates include “Batgirl,” which cost $90 million to make and was in post-production when Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.
    WBD,
    -4.57%
    pulled the plug.

    The same fate could also await two other shelved Warner Bros. movies, “Scoob! Holiday Haunt” and the completed “Coyote vs. Acme.”

    While the $90 million “Batgirl” is a tax write-off, there could be upside to “Coyote” and “Scoob!” if they went to streaming without a costly marketing campaign, said SmarTech Research’s Vena.

    Still, the long-term plans of streaming giants to meld tech to TV remains a ticklish task, said Wurl’s Gutman. “TV is a lean-back experience, not a lean-into technology medium,” he said. “People are looking at their phones while watching TV. It is a passive experience.”

    Tracy Swedlow, founder and co-producer of the TV of Tomorrow Show conference, said: “They’ve been burning a candle at both ends, investing in original content as well as licensing long-tail content such as ‘Suits’ and ‘Breaking Bad.’ Something has to give.”

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  • Alibaba, Dice, Arcellx, Avis, PayPal, and More Stock Market Movers

    Alibaba, Dice, Arcellx, Avis, PayPal, and More Stock Market Movers

    This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com.

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/stock-market-movers-fb3791aa

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  • Is it safe to live near recycling centers? Questions surge after Indiana plastics site burns.

    Is it safe to live near recycling centers? Questions surge after Indiana plastics site burns.

    As the fire at an Indiana plastics-recycling storage facility burned over several days and officials scrambled to calm evacuated residents and measure air quality, larger safety questions emerged across a nation that relies on recycling to help offset the impact of teeming landfills and littered waterways.

    Authorities in the eastern part of the state on Sunday finally lifted a dayslong evacuation order after it was determined immediate environmental concerns related to the fire had passed.

    But the man-made disaster had already done its part, leaving many wondering if recycling centers — challenging to regulate because they range from small community-led efforts to major industrial facilities — are as safe as Americans think they are?

    Public health experts told MarketWatch the nation needs to take a harder look at how we store and dispose of chemicals-heavy plastics in particular, along with other recycled materials that can act as a tinderbox in certain conditions. It may be a wakeup call to the scores of Americans who embrace recycling as one of the longest-tested and straightforward solutions to help the environment. What happens after recyclable materials leave the home can be quite another story, however.

    Read: Recycling is confusing — how to be smarter about all that takeout plastic

    Worker safety in the handling of large recycling machinery remains a priority of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and other agencies, but less scrutiny may be given to the emissions those workers breathe in, and in the case of the Indiana emergency, what pollution community members near a recycling center may be exposed to.

    “Any company, regardless of its intentions, must be held accountable for regulations, not only for the safety of its employees, but for the communities around it,” Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, a pulmonologist, who is the national spokesperson for the American Lung Association, told MarketWatch.

    “This [Indiana crisis] is alarming — a good deed [such as recycling] undone by the consequences of not having sound safety precautions,” said Galiatsatos, who is also an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and helps lead community engagement for the Baltimore Breathe Center.

    As for the fire in Richmond, Ind., a college town and county seat of about 35,000 people near the Ohio border, the city’s fire chief, Tim Brown, made clear that there were known code violations by the operator of the former factory that had been turned into plastics storage for recycling or resale. This dangerous fire was a matter of “when, not if,” Brown said in the initial hours that the fire, whose origin is not yet known, burned.

    The city of Richmond’s official site about the disaster described the fire as initially impacting “two warehouses containing large amounts of chipped, shredded and bulk recycled plastic, [which] caught fire.” The site does offer cleanup help advice.

    Brown, the fire chief, reported that just over 13 of the 14 acres which made up the recycling facility’s property had burned, according to nearby Dayton, Ohio, station WDTN. Brown told reporters the six buildings at the site of the fire were full of plastic from “floor to ceiling, wall to wall,” along with several full semi-trailers. He said Sunday that fire fighters would continue to monitor for flare-ups, according to the Associated Press.

    Richmond Mayor Dave Snow said the owner of the buildings has ignored citations that dinged his operation for code violations, and the city has continued to go through steps to get the owner to clean up the property, including preventing the operator from taking on additional plastic.

    “We just wish the property owner and the business owner would’ve taken this more serious from day one,” Snow said, according to the report out of Dayton, which cited sister station WXIN. “This person has been negligent and irresponsible, and it’s led to putting a lot of people in danger,” the mayor added.

    But some environmental groups say lax enforcement puts citizens at risk.

    “Indiana is already top in the nation for water and air quality violations, but the consequences are too negligible here for industry to adhere to the laws,” said Susan Thomas, communications director at Just Transition Northwest Indiana, a climate justice group based in the state.

    “We need real solutions to the climate crisis, not more false ones that shield chronic polluters from justice,” she said.

    The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had collected debris samples from the Richmond fire and searched nearby grounds for any debris, which will be sampled for asbestos given the age of the buildings housing the recycling facility. Residents have been warned not to touch or mow over debris until the sample results are available. Testing was also carried out on the Ohio side of the border.

    No doubt, the catastrophe had impacted daily life. Wayne County, Ind., health department officials and fire-safety officials told residents to shelter in place and reduce outdoor activity if they even smelled smoke. According to the health department’s help line, symptoms that may be related to breathing smoke include repeated coughing, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, wheezing, chest tightness or pain, palpitations, nausea or lightheadedness.

    Any safer than a landfill?

    When a lens on recycling is widened, it comes to light that how facilities handle their plastic and other materials may not involve much more care than that given to chemical-emitting plastic left to break down in a landfill, say the concerned public health officials.

    Of the 40 million tons of plastic waste generated in the U.S., only 5%-6%, or about two million tons, is recycled, according to a report conducted by the environmental groups Beyond Plastics and The Last Beach Cleanup. About 85% went to landfills, and 10% was incinerated. The rate of plastic recycling has decreased since 2018, when it was at 8.7%, per the study.

    Generally speaking, when plastic particles break down, they gain new physical and chemical properties, increasing the risk they will have a toxic effect on organisms, says the environmental arm of the United Nations. The larger the number of potentially affected species and ecological functions, the more likely it is that toxic effects will occur.

    And although the conditions of the Indiana fire differ from those experienced earlier this year when a Norfolk Southern Corp.
    NSC,
    +0.30%
    freight train carrying hazardous materials in several cars derailed near East Palestine, Ohio, the public’s concern for that event — which also sparked an evacuation after a chemical plume from a controlled burn — spread widely on social media.

    Now, add in Richmond. The public, at large, is increasingly wondering if officials are doing their job to prevent such disasters, and whether the full extent of chemical exposure is known.

    “This [fire in Indiana] overlaps in a general sense the chemical safety question raised by the Ohio derailment — and it shouldn’t have just been raised by that one event, but that certainly brought it into focus,” said Dr. Peter Orris, chief of occupational and environmental medicine at the University of Illinois – Chicago.

    Orris said lasting solutions pushing awareness and safety around the storage and transportation of chemicals and chemical-based plastic must span political differences over the reach of regulation. He recalled a time just after the 9/11 terror attacks when a fresh look at the transportation of toxic chemicals and the storage and shipment of ammonia and other substances that can have nefarious uses in the wrong hands drew support from unusual partners.

    “Shortly after 9/11 a rather broad coalition, including environmental interests such as Greenpeace, and consumer groups, with congressional support, alongside Homeland Security all pushed a model bill about where and how you could transport toxic chemicals, especially going through populated areas,” he said. “Dealing with new concerns around chemicals and recycling plastic may require the same breadth of interests.”

    Already, the Biden administration has shown the will to target chemical exposure in U.S. water. Earlier this year, the EPA moved to require near-zero levels of perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, part of a classification of chemicals known as PFAS, and also called “forever chemicals” due to how long they persist in the environment. Both the chemical companies and their trade groups have pushed their own steps toward reducing risk, they say. Exposure to some of the chemicals has been linked to cancer, liver damage, fertility and thyroid problems, as well as asthma and other health effects.

    Read more: Cancer-linked PFAS — known as ‘forever chemicals’ — could be banned in drinking water for first time

    And, Orris stressed, regulating recycling with a one-size-fits-all approach may not work.

    Surprisingly, it can be the smaller recycling facilities that take bigger steps in curbing emissions than their larger counterparts. Orris in recent years reported on efforts of a San Francisco recycling plant that made emissions reduction a priority, including by banning incineration. The same research trip turned up issues with a Los Angeles-area plant, exposing “real problems with its policies and procedures beginning with the neighborhood smell from organic materials to other issues with toxins.”

    How can plastic be so dangerous?

    Specifically, the chemicals that help fortify plastic for its many uses present their own unique conditions.

    As plastic is heated at high temperatures, melted and reformed into small pellets, it emits toxic chemicals and particulate matter, including volatile gases and fly ash, into the air, which pose threats to health and the local environment, says a Human Rights Watch paper, citing environmental engineering research. When plastic is recycled into pellets for future use, its toxic chemical additives are carried over to the new products. Plus, the recycling process can generate new toxic chemicals, like dioxins, if plastics are not heated at a high enough temperature.

    There are other concerns. Plastic melting facilities can emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and carcinogens, which in higher concentrations can pollute air both inside facilities and in areas near recycling facilities.

    “Plastics, the way they burn, put out dangerous toxins. And plastic can create its own unique chemistry even when it comes into interaction with benign chemicals,” said Galiatsatos of Johns Hopkins.

    “There are the lung issues from people breathing in these chemicals and the toxins associated with them. But there is more: systemic inflation from breathing in chemicals, and that can lead to heart disease,” he said.

    “I wish we would pay the same amount of attention to plastics, their recycling and their disposal, as we do with sewer systems. When was the last time we heard of a waste system-based cholera outbreak in the U.S.?” he asked rhetorically. “Exactly. That we care about. Yet plastics, especially the burning of chemicals, we treat too lightly.”

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  • Bernard Arnault, now worth $210 billion, has extended his lead over Elon Musk on the global billionaires list

    Bernard Arnault, now worth $210 billion, has extended his lead over Elon Musk on the global billionaires list

    There is currently no dispute over who wears the crown of world’s wealthiest person. It isn’t Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.

    The net worth of Bernard Arnault, the founder and chairman and chief executive officer of LVMH Moet-Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE
    MC,
    +1.01%    ,
    stood at $210 billion as of Thursday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index. That makes him the world’s richest person by that marker, with an increasingly comfortable lead over Tesla’s
    TSLA,
    -0.48%
    Musk, who also leads SpaceX and Twitter and whose wealth stands at $180 billion. At times the two have been in a neck-and-neck race for that top spot.

    LVMH shares closed at a record €883 on Thursday, helping lift the French CAC-40
    PX1,
    +0.52%
    to an all-time high. That followed forecast-beating first-quarter sales from the luxury giant, thanks to returning China shoppers as COVID-19 restrictions eased, and rebounding international travel that drove duty-free sales. Up 7% so far this week, LVMH shares rose another 0.5% on Friday to €888.70.

    The stock surge padded Arnault’s fortune by $11.6 billion on Thursday, the second-biggest single-day gain ever for him and a fresh record fortune, according to Bloomberg.  Musk didn’t do badly.

    He increased his wealth by $3.83 billion on Thursday, before Tesla and U.S. equities
    SPX,
    -0.21%
    generally retreated a bit on Friday.

    Read: Who is Bernard Arnault, the world’s richest person after surpassing Elon Musk?

    LVMH owns jewelers Bulgari and Tiffany, alongside fashion houses Louis Vuitton and Dior. Results released late Wednesday showed the luxury standard-bearer beating expectations across every division, led by fashion and leather goods, the latter of which is significant, Berenberg analysts observed.

    “As the most profitable division, this also bodes well for margin development,” said Berenberg analyst Graham Renwick, in a note to clients on Friday.

    “This performance sets the standard for [first quarter] luxury reporting and gives encouragement on China’s recovery from pandemic disruption. Overall, we think these results continue to demonstrate LVMH’s strong momentum and best-in-class execution — again reaffirming its high quality and strong track record, which we believe investors are favoring in this uncertain macro environment,” said Renwick, who reiterated a buy rating on LVMH’s stock and lifted his share-price target to €960.

    The luxury sector got another confidence boost on Friday, as Hermès International SCA
    RMS,
    +1.52%
    revealed sales momentum in the first quarter, driven by a bump in tourism and new stores. The maker of the legendary Birkin handbag saw a 23% annual increase in first-quarter sales and backed “ambitious” organic revenue-growth targets.

    Luxury stocks have seen an impressive rebound in 2023, after a weak 2022 — LVMH shares fell 6% in 2022 as travel restrictions in China and overall economic worries weighed on shoppers.

    LVMH shares are up 30% so far in 2023, with Hermès up 36% and Christian Dior SE
    CDI,
    +1.46%
    and Gucci owner Kering SA
    KER,
    +1.30%
    up 26% and 21%, respectively.

    As for Musk, his wealth is divided among his businesses. While Tesla accounts for $76 billion, Bloomberg estimates his share of SpaceX is worth $49 billion, and his share of Tesla is worth nearly $10 billion. He paid $44 billion for Twitter last year, after an attempt to wriggle out of the deal, and its current valuation is a matter of much speculation. Musk has fired thousands of employees and claimed this week that a return to profitability is now just around the corner.

    Tesla is slated to report quarterly results next week, and some analysts aren’t optimistic due to persistent price cuts of its models.

    Read: U.S. billionaires have grown nearly one-third richer during the pandemic, while a ‘permanent underclass’ struggles, Oxfam report says

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  • East Palestine derailment: Norfolk Southern sued by Justice Department and EPA

    East Palestine derailment: Norfolk Southern sued by Justice Department and EPA

    The Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have filed a complaint against Norfolk Southern Corp. for unlawful discharge of pollutants and hazardous substances in the Feb. 3 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.

    The complaint seeks penalties and injunctive relief for the unlawful discharge of pollutants, oil and hazardous substances under the Clean Water Act, according to statements released by the Justice Department and the EPA. The Justice Department and EPA are also seeking a declaratory judgment on liability for past and future costs under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA).

    Norfolk Southern’s
    NSC,
    +1.51%
    stock has fallen 16.8% since the derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. The stock is up 0.3% Friday.

    Related: Norfolk Southern will do ‘everything it takes’ for East Palestine, CEO tells senators

    “When a Norfolk Southern train derailed last month in East Palestine, Ohio, it released toxins into the air, soil, and water, endangering the health and safety of people in surrounding communities,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “With this complaint, the Justice Department and the EPA are acting to pursue justice for the residents of East Palestine and ensure that Norfolk Southern carries the financial burden for the harm it has caused and continues to inflict on the community.” 

    In a separate statement, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said: “No community should have to go through what East Palestine residents have faced. With today’s action, we are once more delivering on our commitment to ensure Norfolk Southern cleans up the mess they made and pays for the damage they have inflicted as we work to ensure this community can feel safe at home again.”

    Norfolk Southern has created a website, nsmakingitright.com, to track its progress in cleaning up the site.

    “Our job right now is to make progress every day cleaning up the site, assisting residents whose lives were impacted by the derailment, and investing in the future of East Palestine and the surrounding areas,” a spokesperson for Norfolk Southern told MarketWatch. “We are working with urgency, at the direction of the U.S. EPA, and making daily progress. That remains our focus and we’ll keep working until we make it right.”

    Related: Norfolk Southern sued by Ohio over ‘entirely avoidable’ East Palestine derailment

    More than 9.4 million gallons of affected water have been recovered and transported off-site for final disposal, according to Norfolk Southern, along with 12,904 tons of waste soil that has been removed for proper disposal.

    The company has also flushed 5,200 feet of affected waterways and sampled more than 275 private drinking water wells, according to nsmakingitright.com.

    The suit from the Justice Department and the EPA comes just two weeks after Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a 58-count civil lawsuit against Norfolk Southern over the derailment in East Palestine.

    Now read: Here are the chemicals spilled near Philly as U.S. drinking-water safety is top of mind

    No one was killed or injured in the Ohio derailment, but the incident has been described as a “PR nightmare” for Norfolk Southern and the rail industry. The derailed cars included 11 tank cars carrying hazardous materials that subsequently ignited, damaging an additional 12 railcars, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, and setting off concerns about the impact on air and water quality and dangers to health in the region.

    Earlier this month, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw was grilled by senators when he provided testimony on the disaster before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

    While safety was the primary focus of the hearing, Shaw was also pressed on Norfolk Southern’s stock buybacks and the company’s use of precision scheduled railroading, which focuses on the movement of individual train cars rather than whole trains.

    Related: Train derailment in Minnesota thrusts rail safety back into the spotlight

    In his testimony, Shaw vowed to do “everything it takes” for the community affected by the derailment.

    Rail safety was thrust into the spotlight again this week with the derailment of a BNSF train carrying ethanol and corn syrup in Minnesota early Thursday. 

    Everstream Analytics, a supply-chain analytics company, has been researching train derailments involving Class I rail carriers between 2018 and 2023. A Class I carrier is defined as any carrier earning annual revenue greater than $943.9 million, according to the U.S. government’s Surface Transportation Board. Data show that derailments across rail companies increased considerably in the U.S. between 2021 and 2022, according to Everstream Analytics.

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  • Earnings Watch: Microsoft, Tesla and Intel are about to face the doubters

    Earnings Watch: Microsoft, Tesla and Intel are about to face the doubters

    After one of the worst years in Wall Street’s history, investors have some serious questions for companies. As holiday returns roll in — and with them, forecasts for the months or year ahead — many have the chance to answer those questions, or avoid them.

    In the busiest week of the holiday-earnings season so far, three big names will take the stage on back-to-back-to-back afternoons. Here is what to expect:

    Microsoft Corp.

    Microsoft
    MSFT,
    +3.57%
    shed $737 billion in market value last year, the third-most of any S&P 500 company, then announced plans to lay off some 10,000 workers this month. Previously a Wall Street darling thanks to the phenomenal growth of its Azure cloud-computing offering, Microsoft now faces a cutback in enterprise spending on cloud and other products, as companies seek to cut their bills after spending wantonly during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    First Take: Big Tech layoffs are not as big as they appear at first glance

    When the company announced layoffs, Chief Executive Satya Nadella admitted customers were cutting, saying “as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less.” Analysts believe Azure may be holding up better than rivals, however, and will expect to hear about it when Microsoft results hit Tuesday afternoon.

    “Our Azure checks were mixed, but generally better than public cloud sentiment that has turned highly negative over the past few months,” Mizuho analysts wrote. “More specifically, we have heard of increasing levels of optimization, but it is being partially offset by many organizations prioritizing digital transformation.”

    From October: The cloud boom has hit its stormiest moment yet, and it is costing investors billions

    As cloud growth slows down, expect Microsoft to point to the next big buzzword in tech: Artificial intelligence, specifically ChatGPT, the chatbot product developed by OpenAI, which Microsoft has invested heavily in and expects to incorporate into its products. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria this month wrote that Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI would help it build out more AI technology, including in its search engine Bing.

    Tesla Inc.

    Tesla
    TSLA,
    +4.91%
    stock suffered a much larger percentage decline than Microsoft in 2022,as the electric-vehicle maker’s shares closed out their worst year on record with their worst quarter and month ever. After the year ended, Tesla began slashing prices in China and the U.S. in hopes of qualifying for more consumer tax incentives and reinvigorating demand, which could lead to questions about previously fat margins.

    In-depth: Tesla investors await clues on demand, board actions and weigh downside risks in 2023

    For Tesla, which reports fourth-quarter results Wednesday, the results will offer more context on production of the Cybertruck — currently set to start in the middle of the year — demand in China, competition and the impact of price cuts. Auto-information website Edmunds on Thursday said that Tesla’s decision to slash prices by as much as 20% in the U.S. and Europe led to a jump in interest in the vehicles.

    While those cuts seem likely to hurt profit, Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner called it “a bold offensive move, which secures Tesla’s volume growth, puts its traditional and EV competitors in great difficulty, and showcases Tesla’s considerable pricing power and cost superiority.” And a survey from Wedbush analysts found that “76% of EV Chinese consumers are considering buying a Tesla in 2023.” But Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein, said Tesla needed more low-cost electric-vehicle offerings, which might not ship until 2025.

    Tesla earnings preview: Price cuts in focus as stock hovers around 2-year low

    With Tesla’s stock in the gutter, some analysts have raised the possibility of a share buyback to spur investor interest, and Chief Executive Elon Musk said such a plan was being discussed in the previous earnings call. Musk is not in great favor with many investors right now, however, following some heavy selling of Tesla shares in the wake of his purchase last year of Twitter, which some on Wall Street have said has distracted him from the needs of the auto maker. Musk’s tweets have landed him in trouble elsewhere: Opening arguments began last week for a trial centered on allegations that Musk put investors at risk when he tweeted in 2018 that he was “considering” taking Tesla private and had secured the money to do so.

    ‘He broke the stock’: Why a prominent Tesla investor wants Elon Musk to put him on the board

    Intel Corp.

    Intel’s
    INTC,
    +2.81%
    questions were not fresh in 2022, as the chip maker for years has seen rivals like Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
    AMD,
    +3.49%
    and Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    +6.41%
    challenge it in ways that would have been unthinkable in previous generations. Shares still dove more than 43% last year, as declining sales led to plans for $3 billion in cost cuts.

    There’s little hope for a big rebound when Intel reports Thursday afternoon. Personal-computer sales have experienced their biggest year-over-year declines ever recorded, and Intel’s long-delayed new data-center offering that is meant to answer AMD’s challenge only began selling this year.

    Opinion: The PC boom and bust is already ‘one for the record books,’ and it isn’t over

    Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, though, has a chance to lay out his vision for a long-term Intel rebound, as he attempts to make Intel a chip-manufacturing powerhouse again after years of struggles. He was forced to trim his annual outlook multiple times last year, so it will be important for him to provide attainable numbers this time, but without reducing hopes in the path forward.

    This week in earnings

    Expectations remain low for fourth-quarter earnings season overall, with consumers squeezed by higher prices and interest rates, and hopes fading for any relief from the holiday shopping season. But even with a low bar, the fourth-quarter results from companies so far have been worse than the historical norm, with FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters writing Friday that “the fourth-quarter earnings season for the S&P 500 is not off to a strong start.”

    So far, 11% of S&P 500 companies have reported fourth-quarter results, with roughly one-third reporting earnings better than estimates, Butters reported. That’s lower than the 10-year average of 73%.

    Still, Wall Street generally expects strong profit margins for companies in the S&P 500, as earlier price increases — which help businesses offset their own costs and test the limits of consumer demand — mix with more recent cost cuts.

    For the week ahead, 93 companies in the S&P 500 index
    SPX,
    +1.89%    ,
    and 12 of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA,
    +1.00%
    components, are set to report quarterly results.

    Mark your calendars! Here is MarketWatch’s full earnings calendar for the week

    Among the highlights: General Electric Co.
    GE,
    +1.07%
    reports Tuesday for the first time since splitting off its GE HealthCare Technologies
    GEHC,
    +4.43%
    business. 3M Co.
    MMM,
    +1.87%
    — which makes Post-it Notes, duct tape, air filters, adhesives and coatings — also reports Tuesday, after the company in October said the costs of raw materials, a big driver of inflation, were showing signs of easing.

    And as demand for goods eases amid worries about a downturn, a number of railroad operators that ship those goods report during the week. Union Pacific Corp.
    UNP,
    +1.54%    ,
    whose lines ship across the Western half of the U.S., reports on Tuesday, while CSX Corp.
    CSX,
    +1.46%    ,
    which covers much of the East, reports Wednesday. Norfolk Southern Corp.
    NSC,
    +1.51%
    also reports Wednesday.

    Telecom giants Verizon Communications Inc.
    VZ,
    -0.15%    ,
    AT&T Inc.
    T,
    +1.53%
    and Comcast Corp.
    CMCSA,
    +3.22%
    report Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. Results there will offer a clearer sense of the state of demand for Apple Inc.’s
    AAPL,
    +1.92%
    iPhones, as premium models suffer from production snags, and for broadband, which saw heightened demand when more people were staying home due to the pandemic.

    The call to put on your calendar

    Southwest, post-meltdown: Southwest Airlines Co.
    LUV,
    +1.67%    ,
    which reports on Thursday, will offer executives with plenty to answer for, after bad weather and an overloaded, aging scheduling system caused thousands of flight cancellations over the holidays.

    For more: Southwest Airlines turns to repairing its reputation after holiday meltdown

    The implosion has raised questions about the air carrier’s investments in its own technology — after restarting dividend payments shortly before the disruptions — and airlines’ ability to handle the post-lockdown travel rebound. The breakdown has underscored the airline industry’s bigger issues with understaffing, after 2020’s wave of departures, as carriers try to reload flight schedules to meet pent-up travel demand.

    Scott Kirby, chief executive at United Airlines Holdings Inc.
    UAL,
    +2.25%    ,
    said during his company’s earnings call last week that he felt the industry’s goals to expand their flight coverage this year and beyond were “simply unachievable.” And he said that airlines that tried to follow prepandemic patterns were destined to face trouble. He said manufacturers were suffering from delays in building jets, engines and other parts, and that airlines had outgrown their technology infrastructure.

    For more: United Airlines swings to profit despite ‘worst’ winter storm’

    “All of us, airlines and the FAA, lost experienced employees and most didn’t invest in the future,” he said. “That means the system simply can’t handle the volume today, much less the anticipated growth.”

    American Airlines Group Inc.
    AAL,
    +0.37%    ,
    Alaska Air Group Inc.
    ALK,
    +0.85%
    and JetBlue Airways Corp.
    JBLU,
    +0.94%
    are also expected to report results Thursday morning, along with Southwest.

    The numbers to watch

    Visa, Mastercard and consumer spending: The return of travel and entertainment, along with rising prices, have helped prop up consumer spending. But as Visa Inc.
    V,
    +1.77%    ,
    Mastercard Inc.
    MA,
    +2.27%    ,
    American Express Co.
    AXP,
    +3.23%
    and Capital One Financial Corp.
    COF,
    +6.40%
    prepare to report, their finance-industry counterparts are getting nervous — and taking more steps to pad themselves against the fallout from consumers struggling to pay their bills.

    Credit-card issuer Capital One reports results on Tuesday, while card payments-network providers Visa and Mastercard report on Thursday, with Amex on Friday morning. They’ll report after shares of Discover Financial Services
    DFS,
    +4.16%
    got hit last week after the company, which also offers credit cards and loans, set aside more money to cover souring credit, and reported a bump in its net charge-off rate — a measure of debt a company thinks is unlikely to be recovered.

    Larger banks, like JPMorgan Chase & Co.
    JPM,
    +0.24%    ,
    have also set aside more money to guard against credit losses.

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  • Earnings Watch: Microsoft, Tesla and Intel are about to face the doubters

    Earnings Watch: Microsoft, Tesla and Intel are about to face the doubters

    After one of the worst years in Wall Street’s history, investors have some serious questions for companies. As holiday returns roll in — and with them, forecasts for the months or year ahead — many have the chance to answer those questions, or avoid them.

    In the busiest week of the holiday-earnings season so far, three big names will take the stage on back-to-back-to-back afternoons. Here is what to expect:

    Microsoft Corp.

    Microsoft
    MSFT,
    +3.57%
    shed $737 billion in market value last year, the third-most of any S&P 500 company, then announced plans to lay off some 10,000 workers this month. Previously a Wall Street darling thanks to the phenomenal growth of its Azure cloud-computing offering, Microsoft now faces a cutback in enterprise spending on cloud and other products, as companies seek to cut their bills after spending wantonly during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

    First Take: Big Tech layoffs are not as big as they appear at first glance

    When the company announced layoffs, Chief Executive Satya Nadella admitted customers were cutting, saying “as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less.” Analysts believe Azure may be holding up better than rivals, however, and will expect to hear about it when Microsoft results hit Tuesday afternoon.

    “Our Azure checks were mixed, but generally better than public cloud sentiment that has turned highly negative over the past few months,” Mizuho analysts wrote. “More specifically, we have heard of increasing levels of optimization, but it is being partially offset by many organizations prioritizing digital transformation.”

    From October: The cloud boom has hit its stormiest moment yet, and it is costing investors billions

    As cloud growth slows down, expect Microsoft to point to the next big buzzword in tech: Artificial intelligence, specifically ChatGPT, the chatbot product developed by OpenAI, which Microsoft has invested heavily in and expects to incorporate into its products. D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria this month wrote that Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI would help it build out more AI technology, including in its search engine Bing.

    Tesla Inc.

    Tesla
    TSLA,
    +4.91%
    stock suffered a much larger percentage decline than Microsoft in 2022,as the electric-vehicle maker’s shares closed out their worst year on record with their worst quarter and month ever. After the year ended, Tesla began slashing prices in China and the U.S. in hopes of qualifying for more consumer tax incentives and reinvigorating demand, which could lead to questions about previously fat margins.

    In-depth: Tesla investors await clues on demand, board actions and weigh downside risks in 2023

    For Tesla, which reports fourth-quarter results Wednesday, the results will offer more context on production of the Cybertruck — currently set to start in the middle of the year — demand in China, competition and the impact of price cuts. Auto-information website Edmunds on Thursday said that Tesla’s decision to slash prices by as much as 20% in the U.S. and Europe led to a jump in interest in the vehicles.

    While those cuts seem likely to hurt profit, Deutsche Bank analyst Emmanuel Rosner called it “a bold offensive move, which secures Tesla’s volume growth, puts its traditional and EV competitors in great difficulty, and showcases Tesla’s considerable pricing power and cost superiority.” And a survey from Wedbush analysts found that “76% of EV Chinese consumers are considering buying a Tesla in 2023.” But Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein, said Tesla needed more low-cost electric-vehicle offerings, which might not ship until 2025.

    Tesla earnings preview: Price cuts in focus as stock hovers around 2-year low

    With Tesla’s stock in the gutter, some analysts have raised the possibility of a share buyback to spur investor interest, and Chief Executive Elon Musk said such a plan was being discussed in the previous earnings call. Musk is not in great favor with many investors right now, however, following some heavy selling of Tesla shares in the wake of his purchase last year of Twitter, which some on Wall Street have said has distracted him from the needs of the auto maker. Musk’s tweets have landed him in trouble elsewhere: Opening arguments began last week for a trial centered on allegations that Musk put investors at risk when he tweeted in 2018 that he was “considering” taking Tesla private and had secured the money to do so.

    ‘He broke the stock’: Why a prominent Tesla investor wants Elon Musk to put him on the board

    Intel Corp.

    Intel’s
    INTC,
    +2.81%
    questions were not fresh in 2022, as the chip maker for years has seen rivals like Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
    AMD,
    +3.49%
    and Nvidia Corp.
    NVDA,
    +6.41%
    challenge it in ways that would have been unthinkable in previous generations. Shares still dove more than 43% last year, as declining sales led to plans for $3 billion in cost cuts.

    There’s little hope for a big rebound when Intel reports Thursday afternoon. Personal-computer sales have experienced their biggest year-over-year declines ever recorded, and Intel’s long-delayed new data-center offering that is meant to answer AMD’s challenge only began selling this year.

    Opinion: The PC boom and bust is already ‘one for the record books,’ and it isn’t over

    Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, though, has a chance to lay out his vision for a long-term Intel rebound, as he attempts to make Intel a chip-manufacturing powerhouse again after years of struggles. He was forced to trim his annual outlook multiple times last year, so it will be important for him to provide attainable numbers this time, but without reducing hopes in the path forward.

    This week in earnings

    Expectations remain low for fourth-quarter earnings season overall, with consumers squeezed by higher prices and interest rates, and hopes fading for any relief from the holiday shopping season. But even with a low bar, the fourth-quarter results from companies so far have been worse than the historical norm, with FactSet senior earnings analyst John Butters writing Friday that “the fourth-quarter earnings season for the S&P 500 is not off to a strong start.”

    So far, 11% of S&P 500 companies have reported fourth-quarter results, with roughly one-third reporting earnings better than estimates, Butters reported. That’s lower than the 10-year average of 73%.

    Still, Wall Street generally expects strong profit margins for companies in the S&P 500, as earlier price increases — which help businesses offset their own costs and test the limits of consumer demand — mix with more recent cost cuts.

    For the week ahead, 93 companies in the S&P 500 index
    SPX,
    +1.89%    ,
    and 12 of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average
    DJIA,
    +1.00%
    components, are set to report quarterly results.

    Mark your calendars! Here is MarketWatch’s full earnings calendar for the week

    Among the highlights: General Electric Co.
    GE,
    +1.07%
    reports Tuesday for the first time since splitting off its GE HealthCare Technologies
    GEHC,
    +4.43%
    business. 3M Co.
    MMM,
    +1.87%
    — which makes Post-it Notes, duct tape, air filters, adhesives and coatings — also reports Tuesday, after the company in October said the costs of raw materials, a big driver of inflation, were showing signs of easing.

    And as demand for goods eases amid worries about a downturn, a number of railroad operators that ship those goods report during the week. Union Pacific Corp.
    UNP,
    +1.54%    ,
    whose lines ship across the Western half of the U.S., reports on Tuesday, while CSX Corp.
    CSX,
    +1.46%    ,
    which covers much of the East, reports Wednesday. Norfolk Southern Corp.
    NSC,
    +1.51%
    also reports Wednesday.

    Telecom giants Verizon Communications Inc.
    VZ,
    -0.15%    ,
    AT&T Inc.
    T,
    +1.53%
    and Comcast Corp.
    CMCSA,
    +3.22%
    report Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. Results there will offer a clearer sense of the state of demand for Apple Inc.’s
    AAPL,
    +1.92%
    iPhones, as premium models suffer from production snags, and for broadband, which saw heightened demand when more people were staying home due to the pandemic.

    The call to put on your calendar

    Southwest, post-meltdown: Southwest Airlines Co.
    LUV,
    +1.67%    ,
    which reports on Thursday, will offer executives with plenty to answer for, after bad weather and an overloaded, aging scheduling system caused thousands of flight cancellations over the holidays.

    For more: Southwest Airlines turns to repairing its reputation after holiday meltdown

    The implosion has raised questions about the air carrier’s investments in its own technology — after restarting dividend payments shortly before the disruptions — and airlines’ ability to handle the post-lockdown travel rebound. The breakdown has underscored the airline industry’s bigger issues with understaffing, after 2020’s wave of departures, as carriers try to reload flight schedules to meet pent-up travel demand.

    Scott Kirby, chief executive at United Airlines Holdings Inc.
    UAL,
    +2.25%    ,
    said during his company’s earnings call last week that he felt the industry’s goals to expand their flight coverage this year and beyond were “simply unachievable.” And he said that airlines that tried to follow prepandemic patterns were destined to face trouble. He said manufacturers were suffering from delays in building jets, engines and other parts, and that airlines had outgrown their technology infrastructure.

    For more: United Airlines swings to profit despite ‘worst’ winter storm’

    “All of us, airlines and the FAA, lost experienced employees and most didn’t invest in the future,” he said. “That means the system simply can’t handle the volume today, much less the anticipated growth.”

    American Airlines Group Inc.
    AAL,
    +0.37%    ,
    Alaska Air Group Inc.
    ALK,
    +0.85%
    and JetBlue Airways Corp.
    JBLU,
    +0.94%
    are also expected to report results Thursday morning, along with Southwest.

    The numbers to watch

    Visa, Mastercard and consumer spending: The return of travel and entertainment, along with rising prices, have helped prop up consumer spending. But as Visa Inc.
    V,
    +1.77%    ,
    Mastercard Inc.
    MA,
    +2.27%    ,
    American Express Co.
    AXP,
    +3.23%
    and Capital One Financial Corp.
    COF,
    +6.40%
    prepare to report, their finance-industry counterparts are getting nervous — and taking more steps to pad themselves against the fallout from consumers struggling to pay their bills.

    Credit-card issuer Capital One reports results on Tuesday, while card payments-network providers Visa and Mastercard report on Thursday, with Amex on Friday morning. They’ll report after shares of Discover Financial Services
    DFS,
    +4.16%
    got hit last week after the company, which also offers credit cards and loans, set aside more money to cover souring credit, and reported a bump in its net charge-off rate — a measure of debt a company thinks is unlikely to be recovered.

    Larger banks, like JPMorgan Chase & Co.
    JPM,
    +0.24%    ,
    have also set aside more money to guard against credit losses.

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  • The 34 Most Memorable Magazine Covers of 2022

    The 34 Most Memorable Magazine Covers of 2022

    This year’s covers saw everything from fashion fantasies and illustrative political statements to career revivals and retirement announcements; from Lizzo in Bad Binch TongTong and Beyoncé in Harris Reed atop a horse to Nicole Kidman in the now-infamous Miu Miu micro set. There were less gray gradient backdrops from Vogue and a lot more color through styling, set design and makeup (not to mention casting), perhaps signifying a shift in direction of fashion’s perspective. It’s fair to say 2022 brought the best of the best from our favorite magazines.

    Browse our picks for the most memorable covers of 2022 below: 

    Precious Lee by Adrienne Raquel, Elle, April 2022. Photo: Adirenne Raquel/Courtesy of Elle
    beyonce british vogue 2022

    Beyoncé by Rafael Pavarotti, British Vogue, July 2022. Photo: Rafael Pavarotti/Courtesy of British Vogue
    serena williams vogue us cover 2022

    Serena Williams by Luis Alberto Rodriguez, Vogue, September 2022. Photo: Luis Alberto Rodriguez/Courtesy of Vogue
    meghan markle the cut cover

    Meghan Markle by Campbell Addy, The Cut, Fall 2022. Photo: Campbell Addy/Courtesy of The Cut
    lindsay-lohan-who-what-wear-2022-cover

    Lindsay Lohan by Jingyu Lin, Who What Wear, November 2022. Photo: Jingyu Lin/Courtesy of Who What Wear
    timothee-chalamet-90.jpg

    Timothée Chalamet by Steven Meisel, British Vogue, October 2022. Photo: Steven Meisel/Courtesy of British Vogue
    lizzo vanity fair cover 2022

    Lizzo by Campbell Addy, Vanity Fair, November 2022. Photo: Campbell Addy/Courtesy of Vanity Fair
    megan thee stallion the cut cover

    Megan Thee Stallion by Campbell Addy, New York Magazine, Fall 2022. Photo: Campbell Addy/Courtesy of New York Magazine
    emma corrin interview magazine cover 2022

    Emma Corrin by Heather Glazzard, Interview Magazine, Winter 2022. Photo: Heather Glazzard/Courtesy of Interview Magazine
    vogue polska may 2022 cover

    Marie-Agnès Diène by Chloé Le Drezen, Vogue Polska, May 2022. Photo: Chloé Le Drezen/Courtesy of Vogue Polska
    rm x pharell rolling stone october 2022 cover

    BTS’ RM and Pharrell by Mason Poole, Rolling Stone, November 2022. Photo: Mason Poole/Courtesy of Rolling Stone
    madonna-paper-magazine-2022-cover

    Madonna by Ricardo Gomes, Paper Magazine, August 2022. Photo: Ricardo Gomes/Courtesy of Paper Magazine
    Tracee-Ellis-Ross-Marsai-Martin

    Tracee Ellis Ross and Marsai Martin by Keith Major, Ebony, March 2022. Photo: Keith Major/Courtesy of Ebony
    zoe kravitz wonderland magazine cover 2022

    Zoë Kravitz by Ellen von Unwerth, Wonderland, Spring 2022. Photo: Ellen von Unwerth/Courtesy of Wonderland

    adut akech v magazine supermodel issue 2022

    Adut Akech by Adrienne Raquel, V Magazine, Winter 2022. Photo: Adrienne Raquel/Courtesy of V Magazine
    linda evangelista british vogue september 2022 cover

    Linda Evangelista by Steven Meisel, British Vogue, September 2022. Photo: Steven Meisel/Courtesy of British Vogue
    robert-pattinson-gq-cover-march-2022-b.jpg

    Robert Pattinson by Jack Bridgland, GQ, March 2022. Photo: Jack Bridgland/Courtesy of GQ
    keke palmer who what wear 2022 cover

    Keke Palmer by Alex Harper, Who What Wear, March 2022. Photo: Alex Harper/Courtesy of Who What Wear
    harry styles rolling stone 2022 cover

    Harry Styles by Amanda Fordyce, Rolling Stone UK, October/November 2022. Photo: Amanda Fordyce/Courtesy of Rolling Stone UK
    vogue netherlands the marriage issue 2022

    Nella Ngingo and Arantxa Oosterwolde by Linda Gumus Gerritsen, Vogue Netherlands, May 2022. Photo: Linda Gumus Gerritsen/Courtesy of Vogue Netherlands
    Rolling-Stone-Cover-Selena-Gomez-2022

    Selena Gomez by Amanda Charchian, Rolling Stone, December 2022. Photo: Amanda Charchian/Courtesy of Rolling Stone
    Elliot-page-esquire-kb-inline-220601-22a40c

    Elliot Page by Ruven Afanador, Esquire, Summer 2022. Photo: Ruven Afanador/Courtesy of Esquire
    nicole kidman vanity fair 2022

    Nicole Kidman by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari, Vanity Fair, Hollywood 2022. Photo: Maurizio Catalan and Pierpaolo Ferrari/Courtesy of Vanity Fair
    zendaya w magazine cover 2022

    Zendaya by Jack Davison, W Magazine, Directors Issue 2022. Photo: Jack Davison/Courtesy of W Magazine
    zendaya vogue italia cover 2022

    Zendaya by Elizaveta Porodina, Vogue Italia, July 2022. Photo: Elizaveta Porodina/Courtesy of Vogue Italia
    Penelope Cruz w magazine 2022 cover

    Penélope Cruz by Pedro Almodóvar, W Magazine, Directors Issue 2022. Photo: Pedro Almodóvar/Courtesy of W Magazine
    british vogue february 2022 cover

    Adut Akech, Amar Akway, Majesty Amare, Akon Changkou, Maty Fall Diba, Janet Jumbo, Abény Nhial, Nyagua Ruea and Amok Yai by Rafael Pavarotti, British Vogue, February 2022. Photo: Rafael Pavarotti/Courtesy of British Vogue
    naomi campbell british vogue march 2022 cover

    Naomi Campbell by Steven Meisel, British Vogue, March 2022. Photo: Steven Meisel/Courtesy of British Vogue
    anne hathaway interview magazine cover 2022

    Anne Hathaway by Collier Schorr, Interview Magazine, Summer 2022. Photo: Collier Schorr/Courtesy of Interview Magazine
    emma chamberlain instyle mexico 2022 cover

    Emma Chamberlain by Max Montgomery, InStyle Mexico, November 2022. Photo: Max Montgomery/Courtesy of InStyle Mexico
    hoyeon jung vogue cover 2022

    Hoyeon Jung by Harley Weir, Vogue, February 2022. Photo: Harley Weir/Courtesy of Vogue
    kim kardashian vogue cover 2022

    Kim Kardashian by Carlijn Jacobs, Vogue, March 2022. Photo: Carlijn Jacobs/Courtesy of Vogue
    vogue polska cover april 2022

    “Slava Ukraini” by Yelena Yemchuk, Vogue Polska, April 2022. Photo: Yelena Yemchuk/Courtesy of Vogue Polska
    New York magazine 39 reasons to love new york

    New Yorkers by Pelle Cass, New York Magazine, December 2022. Photo: Pelle Cass/Courtesy of New York Magazine

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    Brooke Frischer

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  • Senate passes bill to prevent rail strike, rejects measure providing paid sick leave

    Senate passes bill to prevent rail strike, rejects measure providing paid sick leave

    The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted 80-15 in favor of a bill that would prevent a rail strike by imposing a deal on freight-rail workers, after rejecting a separate House-passed measure that would require rail companies to provide those workers with seven days of paid sick leave per year.

    The vote for the bill imposing a deal keeps Washington on track to block a strike, as the House of Representatives passed it Wednesday. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the legislation into law given that he called on Monday for Congress to act.

    Business groups have been warning that even a short-term strike would have a tremendous impact and cause economic pain.

    The deal that would be imposed on rail employees includes a 24% increase in wages from 2020 through 2024, but workers have remained concerned about a lack of paid sick time.

    In the vote on sick leave, there were 52 senators in favor, while 43 were opposed, and 60 votes for it were needed. A half dozen Republican senators were in favor, while Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia was the only Democrat in opposition.

    “While I am sympathetic to the concerns union members have raised, I do not believe it is the role of Congress to renegotiate a collective bargaining agreement that has already been negotiated,” Manchin said in a statement. 

    Earlier Thursday, the Senate also voted against an amendment from Republican senators that aimed to deliver a cooling-off period so talks between rail companies and their workers could continue.

    Railroad operators’ stocks finished with gains Tuesday as traders reacted to Washington’s moves to prevent a strike, but Norfolk Southern Corp.
    NSC,
    -0.05%    ,
     CSX Corp. 
    CSX,
    -0.03%
    and Union Pacific Corp.
    UNP,
    -0.69%
    all lost ground Thursday as the broad market
    SPX,
    -0.09%

    DJIA,
    -0.56%
    closed mostly lower.

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  • ‘A rail shutdown would devastate our economy’: Biden urges Congress to head off potential strike

    ‘A rail shutdown would devastate our economy’: Biden urges Congress to head off potential strike

    OMAHA, Neb. — President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, following pressure by business groups on the stalled negotiations.

    “Let me be clear: a rail shutdown would devastate our economy,” Biden said in a statement. “Without freight rail, many U.S. industries would shut down.”

    Congress has the power to impose contract terms on the workers, but it’s not clear what lawmakers might include if they do. They could also force the negotiations to continue into the new year.

    Both the unions and railroads have been lobbying Congress while contract talks continue. Four rail unions that represent more than half of the 115,000 workers in the industry have rejected the deals that Biden helped broker before the original strike deadline in September and are back at the table trying to work out new agreements. Eight other unions have approved their five-year deals with the railroads and are in the process of getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.

    Biden said that as a “a proud pro-labor president” he was reluctant to override the views of people who voted against the agreement. “But in this case — where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families — I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.”

    Biden’s remarks came after a coalition of more than 400 business groups sent a letter to congressional leaders Monday urging them to step into the stalled talks because of fears about the devastating potential impact of a strike that could force many businesses to shut down if they can’t get the rail deliveries they need. Commuter railroads and Amtrak would also be affected in a strike because many of them use tracks owned by the freight railroads.

    The business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and National Retail Federation said even a short-term strike would have a tremendous impact and the economic pain would start to be felt even before the Dec. 9 strike deadline. They said the railroads would stop hauling hazardous chemicals, fertilizers and perishable goods up to a week beforehand to keep those products from being stranded somewhere along the tracks.

    “A potential rail strike only adds to the headwinds facing the U.S. economy,” the businesses wrote. “A rail stoppage would immediately lead to supply shortages and higher prices. The cessation of Amtrak and commuter rail services would disrupt up to 7 million travelers a day. Many businesses would see their sales disrupted right in the middle of the critical holiday shopping season.”

    A similar group of businesses sent another letter to Biden last month urging him to play a more active role in resolving the contract dispute.

    On Monday, the Association of American Railroads trade group praised Biden’s action.

    “No one benefits from a rail work stoppage — not our customers, not rail employees and not the American economy,” said AAR President and CEO Ian Jefferies. “Now is the appropriate time for Congress to pass legislation to implement the agreements already ratified by eight of the twelve unions.”

    Congressional leaders and the White House have said they are monitoring the contract talks closely but haven’t indicated when they might act or what they will do. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said leaders are aware of the situation with the rail negotiations and will monitor the talks in the coming days.

    Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., said on “Fox News Sunday” that congressional intervention is a last resort but that lawmakers will have to be ready to act.

    “Congress will not let this strike happen. That’s for sure,” said Fitzpatrick, who helps lead a bipartisan group of 58 lawmakers. “It would be devastating to our economy. So, we’ll get to a resolution one way or another.”

    “It certainly could end up in Congress’ lap, which is why we are headed to D.C. this week to meet with lawmakers on the Hill from both parties,” said Clark Ballew, a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division, which represents track maintenance workers. “We have instructed our members to contact their federal lawmakers in the House and Senate for several weeks now.”

    The unions have asked the railroads to consider adding paid sick time to what they already offered to address some of workers’ quality of life concerns. But so far, the railroads, which include Union Pacific
    UNP,
    -2.25%    ,
    Berkshire Hathaway’s
    BRK.B,
    -1.31%
    BNSF, Norfolk Southern
    NSC,
    -1.49%    ,
    CSX
    CSX,
    -1.00%
    and Canadian Pacific’s
    CP,
    -1.26%
    Kansas City Southern, have refused to consider that.

    The railroads want any deal to closely follow the recommendations a special board of arbitrators that Biden appointed made this summer that called for the 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses but didn’t resolve workers’ concerns about demanding schedules that make it hard to take a day off and other working conditions.

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  • Meet the 10 biggest megadonors for the 2022 midterm elections

    Meet the 10 biggest megadonors for the 2022 midterm elections

    With four weeks until Election Day, congressional candidates are on track to break midterm fundraising records, having raised nearly $2.5 billion so far this cycle. That’s already 70% more than what was raised during the 2014 cycle and just $200 million shy of the total raised during the full 2018 cycle.

    This cycle has also seen record-shattering outside spending, topping $1 billion through the beginning of October, according to an OpenSecrets estimate.

    The increase in spending and fundraising is due in large part to the involvement of millionaire and billionaire megadonors who have sought to influence the outcome of an election in which both chambers of Congress are in play.

    “When megadonors pump millions of dollars into super PACs, they get to help call the shots,” said Michael Beckel, research director at Issue One, a nonpartisan political reform organization. “Massive spending from a megadonor can influence what issues are talked about on the campaign trail and in Congress.”

    Super PACs are independent political action committees that can raise unlimited sums of money but are not allowed to coordinate with a candidate or campaign. Due to contribution limits, such as those restricting individuals’ candidate contributions to $2,900 per election per candidate, most megadonor spending goes to super PACs.

    More context: These are the basics of campaign finance in 2020 — in two handy charts

    A MarketWatch analysis of Federal Election Commission data through the end of September shows that these 10 business moguls and philanthropists are the biggest federal-level donors this cycle.

    Read: These 3 races could determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate in 2023

    And see: If this seat flips red, Republicans will have ‘probably won a relatively comfortable House majority’

    Top federal-level megadonors this cycle
    Rank

    		 Contributor

    		 Total Contributions

    		 For Republicans

    		 For Democrats

    		 Nonpartisan/Bipartisan
    1

    		 George Soros

    		 $128,782,000

    		 $0

    		 $128,782,000

    		 $0
    2

    		 Ken Griffin

    		 $50,955,800

    		 $50,955,800

    		 $0

    		 $0
    3

    		 Richard Uihlein

    		 $49,117,000

    		 $49,117,000

    		 $0

    		 $0
    4

    		 Sam Bankman-Fried

    		 $39,931,000

    		 $201,000

    		 $37,725,000

    		 $2,005,000
    5

    		 Jeff Yass

    		 $32,754,000

    		 $32,754,000

    		 $0

    		 $0
    6

    		 Peter Thiel

    		 $30,189,000

    		 $30,189,000

    		 $0

    		 $0
    7

    		 Fred Eychaner

    		 $22,343,000

    		 $0

    		 $22,343,000

    		 $0
    8

    		 Stephen Schwarzman

    		 $21,870,000

    		 $21,865,000

    		 $0

    		 $5,000
    9

    		 Larry Ellison

    		 $21,003,000

    		 $21,003,000

    		 $0

    		 $0
    10

    		 Ryan Salame

    		 $18,932,000

    		 $17,432,000

    		 $0

    		 $1,500,000
    Totals:

    		 $415,877,000

    		 $223,517,000

    		 $188,850,000

    		 $3,510,000

    Source: MarketWatch analysis of FEC data as of Sept. 30, 2022
    Note: Partisan breakdown includes non-party affiliated PACs with over 95% of their spending benefitting one party, data has been rounded to the nearest thousand

    Big spending by itself doesn’t automatically mean winning. There have been notable instances of the financially strongest candidates losing (such as crypto-backed House candidate Carrick Flynn earlier this year and billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s self-financed presidential bid) — but money can certainly help put a candidate on the right track.

    “Money alone doesn’t guarantee electoral success, but every candidate prefers to be the one with more money to spend,” Beckel said. He added: “Outside spending on behalf of a candidate isn’t a silver bullet that’s going to guarantee electoral success. But it goes a long way to boosting somebody’s name recognition, and to presenting them as a viable candidate — somebody who has the resources to run a competitive campaign.”

    Information about the spending by the top 10 donors this cycle has been compiled from MarketWatch’s analysis of FEC data and filings, super PAC websites and previously reported comments. Read on to find out who are the top 10 biggest donors this cycle.

    10. Ryan Salame — $19 million

    Ryan Salame, the co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, a subsidiary of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, founded a hybrid PAC earlier this year called American Dream Federal Action. The vast majority ($15 million) of the $19 million Salame has spent this cycle has gone into bankrolling the PAC, which has spent $2.4 million in independent expenditures supporting Illinois Republican Rep. Rodney Davis, $2 million supporting Republican Senate candidate Katie Britt from Alabama, and $1.2 million each supporting Arkansas GOP Sen. John Boozman and Brad Finstad, a GOP congressional candidate in Minnesota.

    On its website, the PAC describes itself as “organization dedicated to electing forward-looking candidates — those who want to protect America’s long term economic and national security by advancing smart policy decisions now.” A representative for Salame didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    9. Lawrence Ellison — $21 million

    The co-founder of Oracle
    ORCL,
    +0.26%
    has similarly bankrolled a PAC this election cycle — giving a total $20 million to Opportunity Matters Fund Inc. The super PAC has largely held onto its funds so far, recent FEC records show, having $17 million cash on hand as of the end of August. Of the independent expenditures it has made this cycle, it spent the most on Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker ($1.3 million), Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson ($1.3 million) and North Carolina Senate candidate and current Republican Rep. Ted Budd ($1.1 million). A representative for Ellison didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    8. Stephen Schwarzman — $22 million

    Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman, the CEO of private-equity giant Blackstone
    BX,
    -2.41%    ,
    is the eighth biggest donor at the federal level this cycle. In March, Schwarzman gave $10 million to both the Senate Leadership Fund and Congressional Leadership Fund, super PACs aimed at obtaining a Republican majority in the Senate and House, respectively. A representative for Schwarzman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    7. Fred Eychaner — $22 million

    Fred Eychaner has also contributed $22 million so far this cycle, but unlike most of the spending on this list, his has been directed toward Democratic causes. The chairman of Chicago-based Newsweb Corporation has given $9 million to the House Majority PAC and $8 million to the Senate Majority PAC, as well as just under $1.5 million to the Democratic National Committee and several hundred thousands to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. A representative for Eychaner didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    6. Peter Thiel — $30 million

    Venture capitalist Peter Thiel was heavily involved in backing Ohio Republican J.D. Vance’s primary bid, giving $15 million in the spring to the Vance-aligned Protect Ohio Values PAC.

    The massive primary investment was “historic” and record-setting, according to Beckel, who added that Thiel’s involvement in the Ohio Senate primary could mark “a new chapter of how mega donors are choosing to play in politics.”

    “I think it’s become clear for a lot of megadonors that there are high stakes to a lot of primaries, and by spending in the primary, where there is typically lower turnout than in say, a statewide general election, they can get a lot of bang for their buck by investing in a primary election,” Beckel added.

    Thiel has indicated that he doesn’t intend to put any more money toward Vance’s bid as he reportedly believes the Ohio candidate is on track to win, and instead will focus his funding on Arizona Republican Blake Masters’ bid to oust Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly in the final weeks leading up to the midterm election.

    Thiel, known for his roles in PayPal
    PYPL,
    -1.69%    ,
    Palantir
    PLTR,
    -0.25%
    and Facebook
    META,
    -3.92%    ,
    has also given a total $15 million to the Masters-aligned PAC, Saving Arizona, with his most recent contribution in July. Both Vance and Masters are venture capitalists, but Masters has worked with Thiel. He served as chief operating officer of Thiel Capital and president of the Thiel Foundation, and he co-authored a book on startups with Thiel in 2014. A representative for Thiel didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    5. Jeff Yass — $33 million

    Options trader Jeff Yass, who founded trading firm Susquehanna International Group, has contributed about $33 million on a federal level this cycle. Yass has given $15 million to the School Freedom Fund, or the equivalent of 97% of the PAC’s total fundraising. The group focuses on the issue of school choice, and its website states that some bureaucrats “hindered the development and education of our youth through school closures, mask mandates, critical race theory, and more.”

    Aside from the School Freedom Fund, Yass’ other biggest contributions are to the conservative Club for Action ($6.5 million), Kentucky Freedom ($5 million), Protect Freedom ($2 million) and Crypto Freedom ($1.9 million). A representative for Yass didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    4. Sam Bankman-Fried — $40 million

    Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of FTX, is the main funder behind Protect Our Future PAC, giving it $27 million of the $28 million it raised this cycle. 

    The organization says on its website that it focuses on promoting Democratic candidates championing pandemic preparedness and prevention “so this is the last time in our lifetime, and our children’s lifetimes, that we will face the devastation that has gripped communities across the U.S. since 2020.”

    The group spent more than $10 million supporting Democrat Carrick Flynn’s House bid in Oregon. Flynn lost his primary in May by 18 points despite his massive outside spending advantage. In addition to Flynn, the group has made over $1 million in independent expenditures each supporting Democratic congressional candidates Lucy McBath, a current representative from Georgia; Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Adam Hollier of Michigan, Valerie Foushee of North Carolina and Shontel Brown, a current representative from Ohio.

    Most of the other $10 million Bankman-Fried spent this cycle has gone to the House Majority PAC ($6 million) and the crypto PAC GMI ($2 million).

    While the vast majority of his spending has supported Democratic candidates and causes, Bankman-Fried does not classify himself as an exclusively Democratic donor — for instance he gave $105,000 to the Alabama Conservatives Fund in June and $45,000 to the NRCC in July. 

    He told Politico in August that he is “legitimately worried about doing things that will make people view me as partisan when it’s not how I feel … because I think it both misses what I’m trying to do and makes it harder for me to act constructively.” A representative for the FTX boss didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    3. Richard Uihlein — $49 million

    Richard Uihlein is the founder of the shipping and business supply company Uline, and is a longtime conservative donor. This cycle has seen nearly $50 million in political spending by him, with just over half of it going to Club for Growth Action. Uihlein has also given about $14 million to Restoration PAC, an organization that says it is “dedicated to strengthening the foundations that made America the greatest nation in the world: God, family, education, and community.”

    Uihlein’s next largest contributions are to the conservative Team PAC ($2.5 million) and the Arkansas Patriots Fund ($2.2 million), which earlier this year made ad buys favoring Republican Sen. John Boozman’s primary opponent. A representative for Uihlein didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    2. Ken Griffin — $51 million

    With $51 million in federal-level political spending, Ken Griffin, CEO of hedge fund Citadel, is the second most prolific donor this cycle.

    The biggest beneficiaries are the Republican-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund with $18.5 million in contributions, the Senate Leadership Fund with $10 million and Honor Pennsylvania, a super PAC that backed Republican Dave McCormick’s Senate bid. McCormick lost in the primary to Mehmet Oz by less than a thousand votes. 

    While Griffin spent about $64 million during the last cycle, his $51 million figure this year marks by far the most he has spent during a midterm cycle. During the 2018 cycle, his contributions totaled less than $8 million.

    A spokesperson for Griffin told MarketWatch that Griffin “supports leaders who are committed to protecting the American Dream and pursuing policies that will create a better future for the United States.”

    “The right policies will focus on creating rewarding jobs, prioritizing public safety, and investing in a strong national defense,” his spokesperson said. “Preserving the American Dream will require that every child is well educated, can access great healthcare, and has the opportunity to succeed.”

    1. George Soros — $129 million

    Not one donor comes close to matching the sum that billionaire philanthropist George Soros has contributed this cycle: $129 million. However, much of that money hasn’t actually been put to work this cycle.

    The majority of those on this list have focused their funding on Republican causes, but Soros’ money has gone to Democratic groups — specifically Democracy PAC II, whose $125 million in contributions comprises 99% of its fundraising. The super PAC spent more than $80 million on Democratic groups and candidates during the 2020 election.

    A representative for Soros pointed MarketWatch to a Politico article from January, in which Soros said the $125 million is aimed at supporting pro-democracy “causes and candidates, regardless of political party” who are invested in “strengthening the infrastructure of American democracy: voting rights and civic participation, civil rights and liberties, and the rule of law” and called his contribution a “long-term investment” that will  support political work beyond this year.

    So far this cycle, Democracy PAC has spent very little and holds $113 million in available cash. Contributions the PAC has made this cycle include $5 million to the Senate Majority PAC, $2.5 million to One Georgia and $1 million to both Care in Action and House Majority PAC.

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