Thank you for clicking on this meaningful headline and welcome to an article with useful information. There were other options, I would presume, like "you won't believe what this one social network is doing to clickbait headlines," but I was banking on those getting pushed to the bottom of your feed. Here's why.

Facebook — that virtual reality world in which your opinions are worth sharing, your political debates are productive, and your exes still let you look at them — is once again cracking down on the tired headline format known as "clickbait," a technique that encourages users to click mindlessly on links in order discover useless information and be served ads.

Facebook first made a similar change its all-important timeline algorithm back in 2014, but apparently more tweaks were necessary. "We’ve heard from people that they specifically want to see fewer stories with clickbait headlines or link titles," Facebook researchers wrote on behalf of the network today. "These are headlines that intentionally leave out crucial information, or mislead people, forcing people to click to find out the answer. For example: “When She Looked Under Her Couch Cushions And Saw THIS… I Was SHOCKED!”; “He Put Garlic In His Shoes Before Going To Bed And What Happens Next Is Hard To Believe”; or “The Dog Barked At The Deliveryman And His Reaction Was Priceless.” (All of these links go to SFist.com, you're welcome)

Media organizations live and die by their cooperation with Facebook, a very good company run by very nice people like Mark Zuckerberg who is handsome and admirable. For example, remember Upworthy? You probably haven't seen them on your timeline recently: As Neiman Lab explains in some detail, they've had to pivot entirely since their original business model was built on a previous version of Facebook's algorithm that basically exploited a loophole that favored the clickbait format.

More recently, Facebook's "Trending Topics" was the subject of heated debate this spring, with conservative news outlets crying foul after a Gizmodo article alleged that some (very miserable) curators made arbitrary decisions on which news stories to promote, or in the case of conservative news stories, supposedly suppress. Facebook later found no evidence of bias in the selection of its trending topics, according to an internal probe, but not after a fun-sounding meeting in May with irate conservative thought leaders. And last year, Facebook introduced an option for news outlets to instantly publish articles to Facebook, another great idea that we really like.

Thanks again, Facebook. Now, back to my timeline, which is full of useful items like this video my roommate posted moments ago:

Related: In New Deal, The New York Times Will Publish Some Articles Directly To Facebook

A drop of inside-baseball publishing news for your consideration: Chloe Harris, Editor-in-Chief of noted local mag 7x7, went ahead and bought the entire publication, thus living many an editor's pipe dream. Though she told her staff last Friday about the change in ownership, the news was made public today.

As reported in SF Biz Times, "She will run 7X7's print and online operations as President and Editor in Chief of Metropolitan Media Inc., with help from her father John Harris, who is CEO of the family owned company."

SFist asked Harris how, if at all, the editorial voice for the style- and design-driven publication might change. "It's business as usual," Harris explained. "We'll continue to build upon the editorial momentum in print and online, with expanded Bay Area coverage and an eye toward long-term growth, diversification, and even deeper community engagement."

Metropolitan Media bought 7x7 (formed in 2001) from McEvoy Media, which owns Chronicle Books and California Home + Design.

Harris, we should point out, also contributed to SFist as our former style editor.

The National Rifle Association is officially not gonna take it anymore when it comes to San Francisco's tyrannical anti-gun agenda. Now, they've taken it upon themselves to sue the city of San Francisco, saying that it's violating citizens' constitutional right to possess arms with a new ordinance that bans the possession of high-capacity gun magazines. The law, which was signed by Mayor Ed Lee on Nov. 8 and goes into effect Dec. 8, prohibits gun magazines that can hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

The suit is brought on behalf of a group of retired police officers and four San Francisco residents and is sponsored by the NRA, who is just trying to look out for everyone's safety, of course. Per the suit: "Limiting magazine capacity for law-abiding citizens to 10 rounds decreases public safety by giving violent criminals an advantage and thus decreasing the likelihood that a victim will survive a criminal attack."

The magazines in question give machine guns, semi-automatic rifles and some semi-automatic handguns rapid-firing capacity without having to stop and reload. It's unclear just what situation would require more than 10 rounds to be fired, unless in the case of really bad aim (or perhaps a blind gun owner). The suit relies on a 2008 Supreme Court decision stating that law-abiding Americans have a constitutional right to possess handguns, and specifically on Justice Antonin Scalia's comment that the government can outlaw "dangerous and unusual weapons." The suit contends the high-capacity magazines can't be considered "unusual," as they are widely sold across the country.

City Attorney Dennis Herrera stated that his office would aggressively defend the legislation. "I have faith that the federal judiciary will agree that San Francisco’s gun laws protect public safety in a manner that’s both reasonable and constitutional. San Francisco has been one of the NRA’s top targets for years, and I’m proud of the success we’ve made to protect our sensible gun safety laws.”

[SFGate]
[SF Appeal]

Matt Werner, author and tech writer at Google, has had unbridled success with the advent of Oakland Unseen, a popular parody Tumblr billed as Oakland's answer to The Onion. Last Friday, Werner released the first-ever print edition of Oakland Unseen. On the dawn of his publication's physical manifestation (don't worry, fans, his work can and will still be found online!), SFist asked Werner five questions about his leap to print. And more.

1. Why did you decide to go to print?

Matt Werner: I decided to go to print because just over a month ago, the story Jack White Flight: Hipsters Fleeing Oakland in Record Numbers went viral. It got over 25,000 hits in under a week, which is a lot for a fake news site about Oakland (which has a population of 400,000).

I saw that the audience for these satirical pieces about life in the East Bay wasn't restricted to local journalists and those blogging about city politics, but that mainstream readers were also interested in these fake news stories.

And why I decided to do print in addition to the online version is because working with the print medium, you're able to do things that you can't online. For example, I'm proud of pages 2 and 3 that Greg Frazier did the layout for. We were about to fill a map of Oakland and a map of the Bay Area with news briefs, and cram in a ton of stories on the 12"x22" paper (24"x22" across the spread) that we couldn't as easily do online. Also, a number of the pieces play off each other, and having a print version, we're able to group the top stories around Local Politics, Sports, Oakland Tourism, and create separate sections for each.

2. How do you come up with your story ideas?

There's no real science to it. I try to write for 2-3 hours 5 days a week. I'm not writing exclusively for Oakland Unseen, but just whatever I'm interested in writing about outside of work. I covered a number of local news stories for Oakland Local over the last couple years, and I've written two books on Oakland and the Bay Area in the past two years. But my last project (Bay Area Underground) and my next project (a play set around September 11th in San Francisco) are very serious projects, and I wanted to do something lighter in between.

Oakland Unseen is a collection of the "unseen" or unheard stories in Oakland. I like The Onion's pieces, but many of them seem to have an East Coast or Midwest bias. So I thought up last October before the 2012 elections, what if The Onion had an Oakland bureau? What would that look like? And I started posting satirical news articles to OaklandUnseen.tumblr.com.

As for the writing process, I come up with most ideas based on observations about life in Oakland, and some people email their ideas into oaklandunseen@gmail.com. I have a small committee that vets the ideas and pieces before they go out so that they're not mean-spirited, but that they're shedding light on an issue in Oakland in a funny or creative way.

So, for example, I haven't been to Burning Man, but I know enough people who've gone from the Bay Area and heard their stories about Burning Man, that I wrote a few fictional pieces about the event. I ran them by my Burner friends before publishing to get their feedback — saying that I don't want to insult the Burner community, but kind of poke fun at the absurdity of the event (from an outsider's perspective) and the stereotypes associated with the event. I incorporated their constructive feedback, and ran pieces like "With Burners Gone, Oakland Residents Have One of the Most Productive Weeks in Recent Memory."

We don't want to laugh at people, but to laugh with them. There's a lot of absurdity in Oakland and the greater Bay Area, that sometimes people reply on Twitter asking if a story is actually true. When I ran "Powerful Vegan Lobby Leads Crusade Against SFO Being Renamed Milk Airport," people replied asking who runs this vegan lobby, and how is it so powerful? And why are they against SFO being renamed after Harvey Milk? I've clearly marked that this is all fake news.

If I have any hesitation with an article, I'll sit on it and run it by a number of people to get their reactions and responses before running or pulling the piece.

3. Who, in print/online, are your comedic inspirations/influences?

This is my first real attempt at comedic writing outside of my first book Papers for the Suppression of Reality, which could be termed "postmodern" or "academic humor."

I interned and volunteered at McSweeney's Publishing for 5 years in the Mission District, so McSweeney's has had a big influence over my writing style. As for Oakland Unseen in particular, The Onion, Daily Show, and Colbert Report — specifically Stephen Colbert's 2006 White House Correspondents' Dinner Address are the closest direct influences.

Other publications that I draw inspiration from are the online sites: Scoopertino, The Pan-Arabia Enquirer, and Kickstriker, and the classic print publications Army Man and Might Magazine.

4. Do you plan an Unseen for San Francisco? Or better yet, Orinda?

I don't currently plan an Unseen edition for San Francisco, although I have plenty of ideas — or better yet — Marin County is just a rife target for satire. Dana Carvey has a brilliant standup routine about Prius-driving Marin parents, and there is plenty of material to do a similar publication on San Francisco or Marin, but right now I don't think I'm the right person to do it because what I know best is Oakland and Berkeley.

And because so much of the media in the Bay Area is focused on San Francisco, I purposely left much of my SF fake news coverage out of the print version of Oakland Unseen, to show that there's also a lot happening on the East Bay, and that if there's this much fake news about the East Bay — there are plenty more real news stories on the East Bay that aren't currently being covered by the mainstream media. I'm just scratching the surface.

5. Anything else you want to tell our readers?

Oakland Unseen is an attempt to show the lighter side of life in Oakland. So much media coverage about Oakland just focuses on the violence and robberies in the city. I'm not denying that Oakland has a high crime rate, but crime isn't the only story about Oakland. In my piece "SF Chronicle Criticized for Publishing Too Much Positive Press about Oakland," and throughout the paper, I offer alternate story lines about Oakland.

Also, I was the editor of the project, and Joe Sciarrillo is the publisher under Thought Publishing, Susie Cagle drew seven drawings in the paper, including the hipster drawing on the front page and the 4 fake "Visit Oakland" tourist t-shirts. Greg Frazier did the design and layout. We also had anonymous submissions from Oakland residents.

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It appears that the Chronicle's exclusive content, which has been locked behind that dreaded subscriber paywall since they launched it in late March, has magically appeared today again for free on SFGate, without much fanfare. Verge reporter and former Chron staffer Casey Newton caught the news and tweeted about it several hours ago, and the Appeal got word from the paper's marketing director Michael Keith. Basically, he's neither confirming nor denying what can be observed on the SFGate site today.

This development arrives, interestingly, just a week after the latest report by the latest, sad report by the Alliance for Audited Media which detailed the circulation numbers, both print and digital, for various papers around the country. There were no updated numbers on the main report for the Chronicle, but we know that their combined daily print/digital circulation was 219,000 as of March, pre-paywall, and once can assume that number has gone down, not up. As of the tally in March, the Chronicle had just slipped off of the ranking of the top 25 newspapers in the country for the first time in many years.

Here's what is easily observable:

• A cover story on the Chron today about an exhibition of unbuilt historical buildings in S.F. is hidden behind the paywall if you go through the Chron website, but you can read it right here.
• Henry Lee's story about Sandra Coke's body being identified is behind the paywall here, but readily available here on SFGate.
• Robert Hurwitt's review of No Man's Land (which we reviewed yesterday) is available for free on the 'Gate as well, which it wouldn't have been a week ago.
• While today's Garchick can't be seen here sans subscription, it can be found here.

Popular Chronicle columnists have already been making their stories available for free, like Matier & Ross, who have been basically duplicating their columns on their SFGate blog, and Michael Bauer, who since April has been providing free links (via a Twitter extension on the URL) to his reviews on the Inside Scoop blog.

We'll update wth more if needed, but keep checking SFGate to see for yourself. Subscribers will likely be informed soon, we'd imagine, that they don't need that digital subscription anymore. Or something.

And would someone please tell them to stop delivering the Sunday paper to us? It's too much paper, and we canceled our subscription months ago. Thanks.

[CaseyNewton/Twitter]
[Appeal]

Previously: San Francisco Chronicle Ducks Behind Paywall, Confounds Readers
Ink Death: AARP Mags Boast Top Circulation In Print World, Most Newspapers Struggling

It's been four years since Valleywag, the blog-of-record for Silicon Valley gossip and tech industry machinations, folded. Now, Gawker Media has relaunched the site "dedicated to mocking the stupidity, incompetence, and avarice of Silicon Valley and the gargantuan grift known as the 'tech sector.'"

The relaunch comes as part of a Gawker redesign that places more emphasis on the site's commentariat with tools and structure designed to "make it more likely ... that informed sources and subjects will bring their voices to bear on our stories, unmediated and of their own volition" and "banishes untrusted or new sources to the outer reaches in a "pending queue." Good luck with that!

The new Valleywag will be run as a Gawker syndicate and helmed by Sam Biddle of Gizmodo, who issued a rousing mission statement that should strike fear into the hearts of half-baked start-up wannabes and tech titans alike:

"The extent to which the bubble blowers of today make, do, or really generate anything of any worth is irrelevant to their sycophants—investors, groupies, conference organizers, and beat reporters, all of which now usually overlap. Your startup doesn’t need to be good, it just needs to be disruptive (read: daringly convoluted), if only for a moment. It doesn’t need to be competent, it just needs to be impetuous. It doesn’t even really need to be—a “Coming Soon” website with a nonsense name is enough for a seat at the table. Get a computer science degree, head west, think of a silly title, drop the vowels, shake hands, and wait for free-flowing millions you don’t deserve in exchange for a service no one needs.

Today’s tech boom isn’t an economy of ideas, but an economy of fantasy: the fantasy that anyone wants a company to digitize their paper junk mail, the fantasy that Pictionary on your iPhone is worth a $180 million acquisition, the fantasy that any half-baked idea will eventually lead to a job at Facebook, and whatever status that lends at a bar in Palo Alto. Fad economies are nothing new, but never has so much cash floated atop so little: at the end of the day, tulips still looked pretty on a table. Hawked above all is the fantasy that all of this posturing and programming represents the American best and brightest, some new pixel-industrial vanguard. That insane dream that our national future has little to do with creating, building, or even selling, and more to do with... Chat Heads? At least Wall Street bankers have the decency and self-awareness to hate themselves.

The days of reckoning for the silicon wunderkind are near, and so here we are: to watch them stumble, catalog their hypocrisies, their excess, their layoffs, and the gradual abandonment of their dreams. The Zuckerbergs who bought the household name recognition they always wanted will be given due scrutiny at a time when they’re rarely getting it. We’re picking up right where Valleywag began because nothing's really changed: seven years later, everyone else is still either too conflicted or craven to bother speaking truth to the Valley."

We're hoping the new Valleywag can avoid the pitfalls of its last incarnation (poor leadership, inaccuracies, an inordinate fixation on people's sex lives) to succeed at its rather grandiose mission. For now, this.

Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin, as Grub Street pointed out, spent Monday tweeting clues about this year's gaggle of the magazine's Best New Chef award winners. The biggest leak, so to speak, was that the majority of the winners have penises. Sobrasada, anyone?

Let's see: this year's most notable and expected winner was Mission Chinese Food's Danny Bowien, who, in addition to concocting some of the finest food in all of the land, has the second best hair in San Francisco. Other noteworthy winners include Top Chef winner Michael Voltaggio (of Ink) and sole female honoree Jamie Malone (Sea Change).

The entire 2013 Food & Wine Best New Chef winners are:

Danny Bowien - Mission Chinese Food, New York, NY; SF, CA
Justin Cogley - Aubergine, Carmel, CA
José Enrique - Jose Enriqué, San Juan, PR
Matthew Gaudet - West Bridge, Boston, MA
Jamie Malone - Sea Change, Minneapolis, MN
Chris Shepherd - Underbelly, Houston, TX
Alex Stupak - Empellón Cocina, New York, NY
Andy Ticer & Michael Hudman - Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, Memphis, TN
Jason Vincent - Nightwood, Chicago, IL
Michael Voltaggio - Ink, Los Angeles, CA

How are the winners selected? According to Food & Wine [PDF], "editors solicit nominations from restaurant critics, food writers and other trusted experts around the country, then travel incognito to taste the food themselves."

On Wednesday, Lucky Peach's "apocalypse" issue hits newsstands. What's a newsstand? No idea. Haven't the foggiest. But you should try to grab an issue of it while you can. Lucky Peach is a welcome addition to the local (and national) food media landscape. And the next issue will be a choice one. Why? Because "apocalypse." And food. And with that, you should check out the release party tomorrow night, featuring Mission Chinese Food grub.

Ticket price, which will run you $35, goes to benefit the San Francisco Food Bank. Included in the cost for tomorrow night's party include: Issue 6 (the "apocalypse" issue), food by and at Mission Chinese Food (imagine that, no line!), drinks by Chandon and Magnolia Beer (*pop* burp), and a slew of food types getting ripped to the tits.

Also, there are like only 10 ticket left. Get on it, kids. Cheers.

What: Lucky Peach at Mission Chinese Food
Date: Wednesday, February 27
Time: 7 to 10 PM
Where: Mission Chinese Food, 2234 Mission (at 19th Street), SF

Photo by Troy Holden.

Local print newspaper powerhouse Todd Vogt has thrown some shade at recently-burglarized Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi via Twitter. Vogt — owner of the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Bay Guardian — unleashed a slew of pointed tweets to his whopping 40 followers (ha, burn) aimed at the former Speaker of the House and her arguably lackluster job representing the 8th District. "[Pelosi] has been a dismal representative for the 8th District," Vogt told the SF Appeal. "She was a totally ineffective Speaker and couldn't control her caucus."

Here are a couple of his angry tweets, which went live in November:

It's November 19, 2012 and Nancy Pelosi still hasn't resigned.This is Day 1.

— Todd Vogt (@sfExaminerPrez) November 19, 2012

Elected office isn't something that is owned or something thatcan be passed from one generation to another or mother to daughter.

— Todd Vogt (@sfExaminerPrez) November 27, 2012

Since The Appeal's story broke this morning on the newspaper magnate's ire for Pelosi, he's been tongue-and-cheekily tweeting about Pelosi, among other things. Behold:

Fiscal cliff standoff? Stalemate? Who cares!! Without real change and new leadership we're no better off. And Nancy Pelosi didn't resign yet

— Todd Vogt (@sfExaminerPrez) December 3, 2012

Did I mention I want Nancy Pelosi to resign? And for people to call for the resignation of all ineffective, self-interested politicians?

— Todd Vogt (@sfExaminerPrez) December 3, 2012

As of 11:55am all inbound/eastbound BART trains sitting stationary for last 5 mins. What's going on?And Nancy Pelosi won't resign.

— Todd Vogt (@sfExaminerPrez) December 3, 2012

BART moving again - Hooray!Nancy Pelosi hasn't resigned - Boooooo!

— Todd Vogt (@sfExaminerPrez) December 3, 2012

What is a newspaper tycoon such as Vogt doing taking BART, you ask? No idea. Crazy world.

Vogt became President of the the SF Examiner after the infamously conservative and backwards Anschutz's Clarity Media Group sold the Examiner back in November 2011 to a group that included Vogt and the CEO of Canadian newspaper company Black Press. Vogt also bought The SF Bay Guardian in April in 2012. (Pst, unconfirmed rumor has it that Vogt might buy East Bay Express So there's that bit of gossip, too.)

He does seem like a nice guy too, even if he is in the print-publishing world. Vogt gets to work with the fine folks at the The Bay Guardian, must to put up with SF Examiner EIC Stephen Buel, and for some curious reason, chooses to ride public transportation. Let's just hope he selects soon an avatar to replace the dreaded Twitter egg.

[SFA]