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Welcome to the latest edition of Breaker. If this email has been forwarded to you can subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here. Also if you have a tip we now have the 24/7 Breaker Tip Hotline so please text or Signal # 551 655 2343 with your tips. Anonymity guaranteed!

Newsrooms plus pressure equals... more drama. This week we go inside the New York Times where a high-stakes business story descended into either threats or farce, depending on your point of view. 

To celebrate the release of his new book, Keith McNally tells us a piece of gossip that is so juicy we've had to redact it. Text if you can fill in the blank. 

And which publication never ever gives credit when they follow stories?

Plus Joe Kahn, Barry Diller, Mark Lazarus, Ben Smith, Janice Min, Jay Penske, Christa Robinson, Chris Rock, Joel Edgerton, Christine Centenera, Choire Sicha and Pamela Paul.

NYT Business Desk 'Death Threat'

(Exclusive.) On April 22, under the headline ‘As Harvard Is Hailed a Hero, Some Donors Still Want It to Strike a Deal’ journalists Rob Copeland, Maureen Farrell and Michael S. Schmidt reported on which of the school’s well-known donors wanted to fight with the Trump administration over its draconian demands, and which did not.

The story was high stakes and high pressure. It contained a raft of big names including Jared Kushner, John Paulson, Bill Ackman, Len Blavatnik, Larry Summers, Joe Bae, Ken Frazier, Ken Chenault, Lloyd Blankfein, Ken Griffin, Condoleezza Rice and Theodore V. Wells Jr. 

But we’ve learned that behind the scenes two key players did not cope well with the deadline pressure. According to two people familiar with the matter, Copeland and the New York Times business editor Ellen Pollock had an epic blow-up before the Harvard story ran. It resulted in a HR complaint about a “death threat” and…

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