Virginia Public Media announced that it has acquired Style Weekly, known as Richmond’s alternative for news, arts, culture, and opinion. The sale will allow Style Weekly to resume publishing arts and culture feature stories online immediately. (VPM says it’ll take some time to evaluate the future of the print publication.)

The New York Times has stockpiled 1,850 pre-written obits. The Washington Post has about 900 on hand.

A followup to our piece about Nieman Lab’s own backyard — Cambridge, MA — losing its last full-time local newspaper reporter. “Saltzman’s successor, Will Dowd, introduced himself this week. But Benton’s larger point still holds. Cambridge, a well-educated, affluent city of about 118,000, is covered by just one full-time paid journalist.”

“BuzzFeed put the document online in unedited form in January 2017, citing the interest in informing the public of the dossier’s role in Congressional and FBI investigations. The posting prompted a lawsuit from Russian Aleksej Gubarev, who contended that he was libeled by the dossier’s claims about his involvement in the hacking of Democratic Party officials in 2016.” (BuzzFeed later redacted Gubarev’s name from the version of the dossier posted.)

The partnership is one of the biggest licensing deals struck by a tech giant since a new French law giving media companies like AFP more leverage. Google declined to disclose financial terms.

“This is about us, as journalists, recognizing that we’ll hold a politician accountable if they say something vile once. But we won’t do it if they do it every day.”

“After years of constant emergencies, it’s a relief. But it’s also breeding something weirder.”

“We found that outlets like The Daily Wire, BuzzFeed’s viral content arm, Fox News, and Yahoo News jumped in the popularity rankings when we used the impressions metric. Most striking, The Western Journal—which, similarly to The Daily Wire, does little original reporting and instead repackages stories to fit with right-wing narratives—improved its ranking by almost 200 places.”

“The new locations and cities will be live by the third quarter of next year. New locations include San Francisco, Boston, Seattle, Raleigh, Miami, Phoenix, Houston, Richmond, Detroit, Baltimore and Salt Lake City.”

“‘Everybody’s very surprised. No one saw it coming.’ That apparently includes [Geordie] Greig himself. Sources said he didn’t know he was being shown the door until ‘very recently’ … just over 24 hours before a press release was distributed early Wednesday evening.”

“Since [deputy editorial director Lea] Goldman joined the company, nine of the website’s employees have quit — about 75 percent of its editorial staff.”

The offices have reopened, however, for voluntary use.