This year, The New York Times' Cooking subscription business passed 250,000 subscribers in less than two years. Bon Appétit's YouTube channel has 4.7 million subscribers. By next year, the majority of Time Out Group's revenues will be driven by its global food hall business. Food52 derives 75% of its revenue from sources other than advertising -- and sold a majority stake to The Chernin Group for $83 million. Read more below.

• Food media is having a moment. But while food has universal and enduring appeal, there are lessons in these examples for most media seeking more sustainable models.
• Politico’s forthcoming tech site, dubbed Protocol, will march into a crowded field when it launches next year, but it’s hoping to be armed with some big up-front commitments from advertisers. Learn more in this pitch deck.
• Twitter this week fully rolled out Topics, a new feature that lets users follow popular tweets across broad subject interests like “K-Pop,” “fishing” or “Nascar,” including those from accounts they don’t follow. Twitter will also be customizing ads for users based on the Topics they follow, according to a people familiar with the plans.
• Disney+ may be an ad-free streaming service, but Disney is a partially ad-supported company. And the much-vaunted launch of the service is going to help Disney build out ads further. Read more.