Are you better off living in a news desert or in a community with a greatly diminished newspaper? Steve Strickbine, the founder and president of the Times Media Group, makes the case that a diminished paper — even with a gutted newsroom — is a better bet for communities. Strickbine’s company recently bought 21 papers from the National Trust for Local News; if Strickbine follows his business pattern, those newsrooms will be trimmed back — maybe down to one reporter per newsroom — but the newspapers will remain open. In an interview with Sarah Scire of Harvard’s Nieman Lab, Strickbine vigorously defends his record. As you read, it’s worth remembering that hedge funds and private equity firms control more than half of the daily newspapers in the United States — and that more than a third of local newspapers in the United States have shuttered in the last 20 years, including more than 100 in 2024.

By many measures, Donald Trump is a failed businessman: After all, his businesses have filed for bankruptcy six times. But as David Frum reports for The Atlantic, Trump finally has figured out a sure-fire moneymaking scheme: Cashing in on the presidency, which Trump has done in an unprecedented (and, it almost goes without saying, unethical) manner.

Meanwhile, what are the chances that the Trump administration actually will deliver on its promise to “Make America Healthy Again?” As the Associated Press writes in this well-reported story, the prognosis for public health programs isn’t good.

From time to time, Oregon legislators have complained about the sheer number of bills they must deal with in the long legislative sessions held in odd-numbered years like this one. They seem to have a point: It’s hard to imagine that the 3,400 or so bills introduced this session all get serious consideration from lawmakers. (The truth, of course, is that many of them don’t; a good number of them never even get a committee hearing.) So it’s interesting to see a battle brewing over a proposal that would cap the number of bills legislators can introduce during the long session. (Legislators already face a bill limit during the shorter sessions held in even-numbered years.) Shaanth Nanguneri, a new reporter for the Oregon Capital Chronicle, has the story.

The Weekend Reader cat desk was excited this week to notice this New York Times story about a new research study about cats: It turns out cats respond differently to the scents of their owners than to the odors of strangers. We told the cat desk that this seemed like a study from the Department of Obvious Findings, but the cat desk persisted, arguing that the real news here was that scientists had succeeded in persuading some 30 cats to participate in a study. Point taken.

Actually, the Times story includes a detail that you probably didn’t know: Cats in the study tended to use their right nostrils to sniff the unfamiliar scents — and dogs tend to do the same thing when dealing with a strange odor. Scientists said this suggests that the right side of their brains is used to interpret new scents, but to prove that, science will have to run brain scans on the cats while they’re sniffing, and — as your cat will tell you — that ain’t gonna happen.

Speaking of pets, the Associated Press reports that your dog or cat may be susceptible to allergies, just like you are. Your pets just may not be sneezing or coughing, the way you do.

If you follow the Weekly Reader, you know I have a soft spot for cosmology stories — specifically, stories about how the universe ends. Essentially, the storyline here is that scientists long have believed the universe will keep expanding until it slowly dies — what’s called a “heat death,” or as The Atlantic calls it in this week’s long read, “a thin gruel of nothingness.” But, now, some scientists — including an early proponent of the heat-death theory — aren’t so sure. (“A thin gruel of nothingness” wouldn’t be a bad name for a band — or, for that matter, for the Weekend Reader.)

John Fogerty, the front man of Creedence Clearwater Revival, arguably among the most underrated rock bands of the late 1960s and 1970s, turned 80 this week, and marked the occasion by playing an 80-minute show at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan. Judging by the photo that accompanies the story, Fogerty has aged extremely well, and the AP reports he’s still in fine voice. He’s just released an album, “Legacy,” with new versions of classic CCR songs — but without the steady beat of original drummer Doug Clifford, they probably won’t sound quite the same.

Shirley Li, writing in The Atlantic, makes the case that the earliest films in the “Mission: Impossible” series were notable in that they didn’t try to establish a canon that continued from film to film — and thus allowed their directors wide latitude. I’m not sure I completely agree — here’s my ranking of the “M:I” movies, from best to worst — but she isn’t entirely off the mark when she calls “Ghost Protocol,” the best movie in the series, “essentially a screwball comedy.”

And here’s a dose of adorable news to wrap up this week: It’s an AP story outlining how the San Diego Humane Society is caring for an orphaned bear cub while trying to minimize the chance that the cub will bond with humans. (The hope is to eventually release the bear back into the wild.) Without giving anything away, it involves a bear mask and a fur coat that smells like black bears. The story will make you feel a little better about the state of the world, even if the photo of the Humane Society’s worker, replete in the bear mask and fur coat, looks like a still from a particularly creepy horror flick.

That’s it for this week. Don’t let your cat get a whiff of that fur coat. We’ll gather again here next weekend.