BUSINESS

Public radio can help solve the local news crisis – but that would require expanding staff and coverage. Since 2005, more than 2,500 local newspapers, most of them weeklies, have closed, with more closures on the way. Responses to the decline have ranged from luring billionaires to buy local dailies to encouraging digital startups. But the number of interested billionaires is limited, and many digital startups have struggled to generate the revenue and audience needed to survive. The local news crisis is more than a problem of shuttered newsrooms and laid-off journalists. It’s also a democracy crisis. Communities that have lost their newspaper have seen a decline in voting rates, the sense of solidarity among community members, awareness of local affairs and government responsiveness. L...

Wordle: how a simple game of letters became part of the New York Times’ business plan. In just a few months, a simple five-letter puzzle has earned its creator a seven-figure sum. The growth of Wordle, in which players attempt to work out a mystery word, has been rapid. At the start of November 2021, the online game was played by just 90 people. By the start of 2022, that number was 300,000, increasing to 2 million soon after. It has reached a level of popularity that made the New York Times value it at over US$1 million (£738,000). Part of the game’s value to users – and therefore to the publishers of the New York Times – is its simplicity. It is quick to play, easy to understand and provides a few moments of stimulating distraction. For anyone yet to try it, it involves six chances to...

Silicon Valley Bank: how interest rates helped trigger its collapse and what central bankers should do next. A former prime minister of Britain, Harold Wilson, is famous for remarking that a week is a long time in politics. But in the world of finance, it seems everything can change in just two days. Only 48 hours elapsed between a statement from US-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 8 that it was seeking to raise US$2.5 billion (£2 billion) to repair a hole in its balance sheet, and the announcement by US regulator the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation that the bank had collapsed. At its peak in 2021, SVB was worth US$44 billion and managed over $200 billion in assets. America’s 16th largest deposit-taking institution just a week ago, it has now become the second biggest banki...

Silicon Valley Bank biggest US lender to fail since 2008 financial crisis – a finance expert explains the impact. Silicon Valley Bank, which catered to the tech industry for three decades, collapsed on March 10, 2023, after the Santa Clara, California-based lender suffered from an old-fashioned bank run. State regulators seized the bank and made the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation its receiver. SVB, as it’s known, was the biggest U.S. lender to fail since the 2008 global financial crisis – and the second-biggest ever. We asked William Chittenden, associate professor of finance at Texas State University, to explain what happened and whether Americans should be worried about the safety of their financial system. Why did Silicon Valley Bank collapse so suddenly? The short answer is th...