You made it to Friday. Congratulations on surviving another week!

To celebrate this monumental achievement, we present you with our now infamous sampling of things you might want to read, listen to, or perhaps even spend a few bucks on. (Though the latter is completely optional, if you are like us then your Amazon Prime Week spending may have gotten a little out of control. So maybe just focus on the free stuff if your wallet needs a rest!)

One of the big business stories of the last week that doesn’t include the word “tariffs” in the headline was the news that Linda Yaccarino, the CEO of X/Twitter, is leaving the Elon Musk owned company after just two years in the position. Given the unpredictable nature of Mr. Musk, there was only a modicum of surprise to this move, even if the timing of her announcement came on the day after X’s artificial intelligence chatbot called Grok spewed out some pretty antisemitic remarks and praised Hitler. The New York Times reported that she had discussed her plans to leave the company before the Grok problem arose.

Yaccarino, who had been on the fast track at NBCUniversal before May of 2023, was recruited by Musk to manage the social media giant’s business operations. The key performance indicator, or KPI, as the tech companies prefer to call it, was for her to bring advertisers back to X after the wild start to its post-Twitter existence under Musk had sent most companies seeking safer harbor for their advertising.

What followed and what led to Ms. Yaccarino’s departure makes for a really interesting case study on how such a news story can play differently across multiple media outlets. So, we’d suggest reading a handful of stories about it to get an interesting perspective on the way the news “spectrum” is working these days.

First off, there is the full New York Time Story which you can read by clicking here.

Then a very interesting alternate account from The Guardian about “The CEO who never was”

The tech business publication Ars Technica dives deeper into the Grok aspect of the story right here.

Entertainment trade publication Variety does a great job approaching the advertising aspects of her time at X in this story.

And Tom Jones of Poynter.com weighs in with an interesting opinion piece further dissecting the media coverage of the departure Yaccarino’s departure and some other journalism headlines of the week on this webpage.

If this sampler hasn’t fully satisfied your curiosity on how large the spectrum of coverage really is, just do a quick Google search on “Linda Yaccarino leaves X” and you can choose from a lot more coverage from a lot more outlets.

From the “what to watch” department, we would direct you to check our author Daniel Pink’s YouTube channel, @danielpinktv. We’ve been big fans of author Pink since his 2006 classic titled “A Whole New Mind.” For anyone working in the media business, we’d suggest checking out his new title from earlier this year titled “Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself.” (A reminder that those are Amazon affiliate links, so we will receive a few pennies if you choose to purchase the titles after clicking on them.)

But Daniel Pink’s YouTube channel @danielpinktv is free, and it features a ton of videos that we can’t get enough of. From summarizing “21 Life-Changing Books in 18 Minutes” to “5 Easy Ways to Make Better Choices Every Day” his messages on what motivates us and what persuades others are definitely our kind of “Must See TV.”

And finally, if you are looking for a refreshing beverage to enjoy at some point this weekend, we invite you to discover (or rediscover, as the case may be) this two-year-old clip of Tom Hanks on with The Late Show’s Stephen Colbert as they try out Hank’s unlikely combination of Diet Coke and Champagne.

There are many follow-up videos of other folks trying the concoction, which is cheekily dubbed as “a Cocagne” (it’s a phonetic joke.) Thus, you can also have some fun going down the video “rabbit hole” on this–as you sample the idea (should you choose to do so.)

As for us, we just prefer our Coke with regular sugar and caffeine, thank you very much. And we wonder why you would ruin that amazing taste with anything else? Beverage choices, notwithstanding, here is wishing you cheers to your weekend ahead.

As a former network news anchor used to say, “We hope to see you right back here on Monday.”