Michael Moritz co-founded The San Francisco Standard, a local news organization. It is acquiring Charter, a start-up focused on the future of work.
Many billionaires from Silicon Valley have lately cast a critical eye on the news media. Michael Moritz, the venture capitalist who made billions by placing early bets on companies like Google and PayPal, is taking the opposite approach.
Mr. Moritz said in an interview over the weekend that The San Francisco Standard, a local news organization he co-founded, was buying Charter, a digital publication focused on the future of work, to broaden its focus. Kevin Delaney, a founder of Charter, will be the editor in chief of both publications.
Mr. Moritz, 70, who has been a resident of San Francisco for four decades, said he had decided to start The Standard because he “couldn’t find out what was happening in San Francisco” anymore because of “the erosion of all the local news outlets.”
“I think news and information in any city is as vital as water, electricity and gas,” said Mr. Moritz, a former San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine covering Silicon Valley.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The San Francisco Standard may seem an unlikely suitor for Charter, which has a global focus. But Mr. Delaney said in an interview that the two companies would look to collaborate on big stories such as the explosion of artificial intelligence, its impact on jobs in the technology industry and changes in the way cutting-edge companies are managed — stories that are all rooted in San Francisco.
“California is the fourth-largest economy in the world on its own,” Mr. Delaney said. “Having a deep, ambitious journalistic agenda there and a strong newsroom is really interesting and meaningful.”
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