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Snap to pay $15 million in discrimination and harassment settlement

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Snap to pay  million in discrimination and harassment settlement

Snap Inc. and California’s Civil Rights Department have reached a $15-million settlement to resolve allegations of sexual harassment, discrimination and retaliation at the Santa Monica-based company.

The settlement brings to a close a more-than-three-year investigation into allegations of employment discrimination, equal pay violations, and sexual harassment. Nearly all the money from the agreement will go toward current and former female employees who worked at the company in 2014 and later.

Snap denies the allegations but said it agreed to settle to avoid a prolonged legal fight.

“We care deeply about our commitment to maintain a fair and inclusive environment at Snap, and do not believe we have any ongoing systemic pay equity, discrimination, harassment, or retaliation issues against women,” Snap spokesperson Russ Caditz-Peck said in an emailed statement.

Snap, which created the popular social media and messaging app Snapchat, grew quickly after its founding in 2011, with its workforce ballooning from 250 in 2015 to over 5,000 in 2022. During that period, women were discouraged from applying for promotions and were subject to unwelcome sexual advances and other harassment, the Civil Rights Department alleged in legal filings.

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“This settlement with Snapchat demonstrates a shared commitment to a California where all workers have a fair chance,” Kevin Kish, director of California’s Civil Rights Department, said in a Wednesday news release. “Women are entitled to equality in every job, in every workplace, and in every industry.”

The case against Snap compiled by the Civil Rights Department portrayed a toxic office culture dominated by men. When women filed complaints internally about harassment, they allegedly were denied promotions, given negative performance reviews or were fired. Male managers, meanwhile, routinely promoted male employees over more qualified women, according to the civil rights complaint.

Women at the company were generally paid less than their male counterparts, the complaint alleged. In particular, women in engineering roles, which account for about 70% of Snap’s workforce, faced barriers and struggled to advance beyond entry-level positions.

“Women were told, both implicitly and explicitly, that they were second-class citizens at Snap,” the complaint reads.

Caditz-Peck, the Snap spokesperson, said the company “disagreed with the California Civil Rights Department’s claims and analyses,” but “took into consideration the cost and impact of lengthy litigation … and decided it is in the best interest of the company to resolve these claims and focus on the future.”

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“For several years now we have successfully implemented tools and governance to achieve pay equity, and we will keep investing in and implementing policies to ensure team members continue to be valued and paid equitably for their work,” he said.

As part of the settlement, Snapchat agreed to hire an independent consultant to examine and make recommendations on the company’s pay and promotion policies, as well as workplace training.

The company will also be required to hire an outside monitor to audit Snapchat’s handling of sexual harassment and discrimination complaints and share its findings with the Civil Rights Department.

The company also agreed to give information to all employees about their right to report harassment or discrimination without fear of retaliation and ensure they complete training on preventing these workplace issues.

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Dark Horse Comics to close all Things From Another World storefronts

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Dark Horse Comics to close all Things From Another World storefronts

After nearly 50 years of selling all things comics, Dark Horse is closing its Things From Another World retail locations.

The publishing house, well known for series such as “Hellboy” and “The Umbrella Academy,” operated two storefronts in Oregon and maintained a flagship store at L.A.’s Universal Citywalk. The Oregon shops will close in June, and the L.A. location will close in September. The company said in a statement that these closures are a part of its efforts to “modernize.”

“This was not an easy decision, and we do not take lightly the impact it has on the people directly affected,” Dark Horse said in a statement.

As the company moves away from the retail business, the Oregon-based publisher said it plans to focus more on its creators and writers, “ensuring they have the development support, creative partnerships, and resources to bring their visions to life across film and television.” Over the years, Dark Horse has become one of the largest comics publishers in the country.

The company also recently launched a games division focused on providing creators with development opportunities in interactive entertainment.

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Dark Horse added, “We believe these changes further focus Dark Horse on its successful core publishing and collectibles business and on deepening our relationship with our fans and the retail community alike.”

The structural changes came a week after Dark Horse Media, which oversees Dark Horse Comics, was rolled into a new parent company, Fellowship Entertainment. The Stockholm-listed entertainment business was formed through a company split at Embracer Group. Under this separation, Fellowship Entertainment is now home to companies such as Dark Horse Media and Crystal Dynamics, as well as IPs such as “The Lord of the Rings” and “Tomb Raider.”

Dark Horse was founded in 1986 by Mike Richardson. He had initially opened Pegasus Books in Bend, Ore., in 1980, with plans to become an author. But as the retail business expanded, he instead decided to get into the publishing industry with Dark Horse. In the first few years of the company, he popularized comic series based on movies such as “Star Wars,” “Aliens” and “Predator.” Today, the company represents over 350 properties across comics, books, films, television, electronic games, toys and collectibles.

The closing of Things From Another World at Universal Citywalk marks the loss of another legacy comic store in the city. In recent years, many storied shops such as Geoffrey’s Comics in Torrance, Earth-2 Comics in Sherman Oaks and Hi De-Ho Comics in Santa Monica have all been forced to close due in part to a struggling retail market.

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Angry Ferrari fans say the Italian company’s new EV is too Californian

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Angry Ferrari fans say the Italian company’s new EV is too Californian

Ferrari’s first-ever fully electric vehicle triggered some fans who said it looks more like an iPhone than an Italian supercar.

The $640,000 Ferrari Luce, which was unveiled on Wednesday, looks like a distant relative of many Apple products. It was built with the help of Jony Ive, the person who designed the look and feel of the Cupertino company’s iPhone, iPod and Macintosh through 2019.

“Legend has it that if you pull the Ferrari badge off the side of the new Luce you see an Apple logo underneath,” one user wrote on X.

A meme circulated portraying the Luce with iPhone applications photo-shopped onto the top, and another showing the car upside down and plugged into an iPhone charger.

To accommodate more batteries and seats, the new EV is bigger and boxier than most classic Ferraris. Ive’s design firm, LoveFrom, which he started in San-Francisco after leaving Apple, was brought in to try to meld the traditions of Ferrari with the new functionality and form allowed by a battery-powered engine.

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In a marketing video, Ferrari’s chief design officer, Flavio Manzoni, said he sees the Luce “acting as a bridge between San Francisco and Maranello,” the northern Italian city where Ferrari is headquartered.

The four-door, five-seat car comes onto the scene at a difficult moment for electric vehicles, an industry that has been battered by President Trump’s policies.

Trump has cut EV incentives for manufacturers and customers, prompting several major automakers to move away from EV efforts and focus on gas-powered options.

A luxury EV effort from Sony and Honda, a high-tech vehicle dubbed Afeela, was shut down before it ever hit the road due to Honda paring back its EV offerings.

Legacy automakers such as Ferrari face a particularly difficult landscape for launching an EV, as die-hard fans are attached to traditional, gas-powered models.

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Ferraris are known for roaring engines and bold, angular designs, a far cry from the smooth, rounded exterior of the Luce.

To be sure, aggressive redesigns often attract ridicule. The early electric Mustang models were shunned by some but have become popular.

One X user posted a meme with a photo of fictional Italian gangster Tony Soprano saying, “I don’t want any California bulls—.”

The online launch page for the car emphasizes that the Luce is “100% Ferrari.”

Still, Luca di Montezemolo, Ferrari’s former chairman, told reporters on Tuesday that the automaker is “risking the destruction of a legend.”

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Ferrari shares have fallen about 8% since the launch of the Luce, signaling investors’ concerns that the car won’t resonate with customers.

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Donald E. Newhouse, newspaper publisher and heir to media empire, dies at 96

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Donald E. Newhouse, newspaper publisher and heir to media empire, dies at 96

Donald E. Newhouse, president of one of the largest family-controlled publishing companies in the nation and a former board chairman of the Associated Press, died Tuesday. He was 96 and died at his home in New Jersey, his family said.

During his career, Newhouse served as president of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., and head of Advance Publications’ newspaper group, which he navigated into the internet age.

“You reveled in his company. He filled you with energy and humor when you felt doubtful and weak,” said Anna Wintour, the global editorial director of Vogue and Conde Nast’s chief content officer.

“He was scrupulous about not interfering in editorial business, but if you turned to him for counsel, he invariably offered judicious advice,” she said in an obituary released Tuesday night by the Newhouse family.

Newhouse, who lived in New York, spent nearly 50 years overseeing the 35 newspapers of Advance Publications, the media business started by his late father, Samuel Irving Newhouse Sr., in 1922. His older brother, S.I. Newhouse Jr., was chairman of the company and oversaw Conde Nast magazines. He died in 2017.

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Louis D. Boccardi, retired president and chief executive of the AP, said Newhouse was an extraordinary chairman for the cooperative.

“His voice was never the loudest in the room, but it was often the wisest,” Boccardi said. Newhouse was instinctively private, but behind that, Boccardi said, was a generous man, at home anywhere and curious about everything.

“He could come across as self-effacing and deferential, but in Don’s skilled hands those were qualities that made him an enormously strong and effective leader,” Boccardi said. “You don’t often see the adjective ‘warm’ attached to a titan of industry, but it applied to him.”

A man who didn’t chase the spotlight

Newhouse, born in 1929, was known for staying out of the public eye. A reporter once asked him to list the biggest chances he took in his career. The answer: “Inviting your questions.”

The usually reserved Newhouse did step into the spotlight when he took on the role of chairman of the Newspaper Assn. of America from 1993 to 1994 and then chairman of the AP board of directors from 1997 to 2002. He had served on the AP board for nine years before becoming its chairman.

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“He was a smart and shrewd businessman but as thoughtful and kind a man as you’ll find. Being in his presence was always a joy,” said Doug Clifton, editor of one of Newhouse’s papers, the Plain Dealer in Cleveland, from 1999 to 2007.

Newhouse attended Syracuse University but never graduated, heading into the family’s newspaper business instead. He would regularly visit his newspapers but left the ultimate authority of running them to his publishers.

“Each of our newspapers operates independently, with publishers who are strong, who set policy for their individual organizations and who have the authority and responsibility of carrying out the policies they set,” he said in 1993 when taking over as chairman of the newspaper association.

Newhouse was known for spending money to make sure that papers got the best stories. Jim Willse, editor of the Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., from 1995 until 2010, said he would give “us all the resources we needed to make the Ledger really special.” Willse said Newhouse loved newspapers and newspaper people.

“He especially enjoyed it when we’d have a story about some politician caught with his hand in the cookie jar, or a spicy feature about stuffed shirts behaving badly,” Willse said.

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Newhouse’s philosophy of spending money to produce quality coverage and a hands-off approach toward his editors led to many successes, including multiple Pulitzers.

Many of those newspapers were able to thrive and remain profitable because they dominated their market, but Newhouse said he was very much aware of what he called the “dramatically changing media landscape” and how people get their news.

“The 15th-century revolution was epitomized by the printing of the Gutenberg Bible; ours by Ted Turner’s cable news network and by web-based news sites — news in real time from anywhere to everywhere,” he said in 2004 at the rededication of a communications school named after his father at Syracuse University.

Three years later, he told one of his papers, the Post-Standard of Syracuse, N.Y., that newspapers can survive “by producing content that is relevant, interesting, accurate and entertaining for newspapers and the internet.”

He steered through financial struggles

Yet the papers did ultimately struggle financially.

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Advance was known in the industry for a pledge that employees who weren’t in a union would have jobs regardless of economic downturns or technological advances. In 2009, the company announced that the pledge would be withdrawn.

The company also moved away from daily publishing of several papers. In 2012, it announced that the Post-Standard; the Times-Picayune in New Orleans; the Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Penn.; and the Birmingham News, the Press-Register of Mobile and the Huntsville Times, all in Alabama, would cease daily publication and would only offer print editions on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Those changes were accompanied by hundreds of layoffs.

“His conservative approach left both the papers and its employees somewhat unprepared for the realities of the internet,” said Thomas Maier, who wrote a 1994 biography of the family.

Newhouse’s eldest son, Steven, spearheaded the company’s growth on the internet and on mobile devices. Steven Newhouse is currently co-president of Advance Publications.

“My dad spent his life in the newspaper business and was devoted to it, built it up and enjoyed many good years. When it became more challenging, he was first in line to work through, finding solutions to keep the local journalism franchise going,” he said.

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Newhouse is also survived by another son, Michael, daughter Katherine Mele and grandchildren. His wife, Susan, died in 2015.

Mayerowitz writes for the Associated Press.

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