First Run News

The newsroom crackles with verisimilitude, its rotary phones, staccato typewriters and a veil of cigarette smoke evoking a bygone grittiness. At its heart are a wisecracking editor and matriarchal publisher. “The Post,” starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, may conjure up newspaper dramas like “Deadline — U.S.A.,” the 1952 film noir about crusading journalists that starred Humphrey Bogart and Ethel Barrymore. But those movies were pure fiction.

LOS ANGELES — Sorry, Batman. So close, yet so far away, Star-Lord. Better luck next time, Captain Jack Sparrow. Rather, the three most popular movies at theaters in the United States and Canada in 2017 — “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Wonder Woman” — were each driven by female characters, something that has not happened in at least 37 years, as far back as full box office data is available.

SAN FRANCISCO — At Rainbow Grocery, a cooperative in this city’s Mission District, one brand of water is so popular that it’s often out of stock.

SAN FRANCISCO — The skyscraper came late to this city, a shipping and manufacturing hub for much of its existence. The wealthy roosted on the hills and the masses toiled on the flats and the docks. Everyone lived close to the ground in a setting renowned for its natural beauty. Now the things being shipped are virtual, and vast amounts of office space are needed to design, build and market them. Salesforce, a company that did not exist 20 years ago, will take up residence on Jan.

LOS ANGELES — On any given day, something crazy is likely to be happening at 1600 Vine Street, a 550-unit apartment complex in Hollywood. A scary-looking clown might be shimmying across a narrow ledge eight floors above the sidewalk, or a young woman dangling from a balcony while a masked man wields a knife.

President Trump is vowing to return to two of his favorite goals in 2018: a crackdown on immigration and the dissolution of the Affordable Care Act. When congressional Republicans passed the sweeping tax bill in December, they eliminated the A.C.A.’s health care mandate.

Let’s get this out of the way: There’s no magic solution for having a better relationship. People aren’t perfect, couples fight, that’s just life. But! Hope isn’t lost, and there are many things big and small you can do to help. We looked through a year’s worth of relationship advice to find the best guidance we have to offer, so here are few tips to take into the new year. “A cigarette and embrace after sex has quickly been replaced with a scroll through social media,” said Gillian McCallum, chief executive of Drawing Down the Moon Matchmaking, a British dating website.

NASHVILLE — Two weeks ago I was reading a book by a brilliant writer whose life was cut short by melanoma — “Dying: A Memoir,” by Cory Taylor — when I noticed a weird little growth on the skin just above my heart. A weird little growth right where long ago I used to slather a baby-oil-and-iodine concoction as I sat on a dorm roof during my college years. A weird little growth that suddenly struck me as almost certainly malignant melanoma. In the midst of a miraculous book, I tend to go overboard on empathy.

It has become routine to talk about mindfulness, but as a dance writer, I’ve been putting it into practice for years. That’s what you do when you watch a dance. You focus your total awareness on the present. Dance disappears before you know it; writing about it requires a level of attention that, at times, seems unattainable.

The Reader Center is one way we in the newsroom are trying to connect with you, by highlighting your perspectives and experiences and offering insight into how we work. FORT SMITH, Ark. — Abraham Davis had his mouth open, but no words were coming out. We were sitting together on his mother’s couch near her Christmas tree earlier this month and I had just played him a short recording of the president of Fort Smith’s Al Salam mosque. Abraham had vandalized the mosque with two friends more than a year before.