Many billionaires from Silicon Valley have lately cast a critical eye on the news media. Michael Moritz, the venture capitalist who made billions by placing early bets on companies like Google and PayPal, is taking the opposite approach.
Mr. Moritz said in an interview over the weekend that The San Francisco Standard, a local news organization he co-founded, is buying Charter, a digital publication focused on the future of work, to broaden its focus. Kevin Delaney, a founder of Charter, will be the editor in chief of both publications.
Mr. Moritz, 70, who has been a resident of San Francisco for four decades, said that he decided to start The Standard because he “couldn’t find out what was happening in San Francisco” anymore because of “the erosion of all the local news outlets.”
“I think news and information in any city is as vital as water, electricity and gas,” said Mr. Moritz, a former San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine covering Silicon Valley.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The San Francisco Standard may seem an unlikely suitor for Charter, which has a global focus. But Mr. Delaney said in an interview that the two companies would look to collaborate on big stories such as the explosion of artificial intelligence, its impact on jobs in the technology industry and changes in the way cutting-edge companies are managed — stories that are all rooted in San Francisco.
“California is the fourth-largest economy in the world on its own,” Mr. Delaney said. “Having a deep, ambitious journalistic agenda there and a strong newsroom is really interesting and meaningful.”
It took a near-fatal car collision to bring the two companies together. Griffin Gaffney, the chief executive and co-founder of The San Francisco Standard, had been searching for an editor in chief for months when he was struck by a car while cycling this spring. He fractured his skull and lost several teeth. That near-death experience, he said, spurred him to renew the search with greater intensity.
“When I was still in the hospital, I went back to all of them, and I said, ‘I almost died. So if you want this job, now is the time to tell me,’” Mr. Gaffney said.
He quickly focused on Mr. Delaney, the most promising candidate.
After Mr. Moritz and Mr. Gaffney met with Mr. Delaney at Union Square Cafe in New York this spring, the talks turned toward acquiring Charter. The start-up, which has about 10 employees, has raised $4 million from backers including FT Ventures, Bloomberg Beta and Lessin Media Company.
Since it started in 2021, The San Francisco Standard has made a splash in a competitive local news environment. It has jockeyed for scoops with the much larger San Francisco Chronicle, which this year was a finalist for two Pulitzer Prizes, and SF Gate, which draws around 27 million readers monthly. Unlike its competitors, The Standard isn’t yet profitable. The company is private, and Mr. Moritz and Mr. Gaffney declined to detail the its finances.
The Standard has invested heavily to make an impact. The company has roughly 60 employees, Mr. Gaffney said. Some are sought-after local journalists who command a premium for their work, such as Tim Kawakami, who previously worked at The Athletic covering Bay Area sports. (The Athletic is owned by The New York Times). The Standard’s journalists have published investigations into the administration of London Breed, the city’s former mayor, and made waves with dishy stories such as one that documented the prevalence of sex in self-driving taxis.
Like other publications around Silicon Valley, The Standard is operating in an environment that is often critical of the traditional news media. Mr. Moritz said that the demonization of journalism by politicians and his fellow tech billionaires is “poisonous” and called their tendency to automatically discount credible news “autocratic” and “corrosive.”
“Every fiber in my being is dead set against that stuff,” Mr. Moritz said.
Benjamin Mullin reports for The Times on the major companies behind news and entertainment. Contact him securely on Signal at +1 530-961-3223 or at [email protected].
The post He Made Billions on Google and PayPal. Now, He’s Betting on News. appeared first on New York Times.
