

Rupert Murdoch in the Oval Office. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Welcome to the latest edition of Breaker. We are Lachlan Cartwright and Ravi Somaiya. 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 (manned by Lachlan) so please text or Signal +1 551 655 2343 with your tips. Anonymity guaranteed!
Emma Tucker’s AI-infused Wall Street Journal refresh is getting pushback from weary journalists. And just as Rupert Murdoch broke the print unions in the 1980s, his current henchmen (and women) have found a legal loophole in London to foil plans for an independent union.
Also this week, one of the faces of CNN is asking for $200,000 and first class tickets for speaking engagements, a Scandal PR operative rebrands their agency and a former top Disney executive is updating a memoir.
Tonight’s edition also takes in Bob Iger, Michael Eisner, Dana Walden, Josh D'Amaro, Almar Latour, Megyn Kelly, Jeff Shell, Jeff Zucker, Mark Thompson, Hasan Minhaj, Elizabeth Holmes, Ray Dalio and Bobby Kotick.
The Breaker Podcast
This week we come to you from the chess corner in Washington Square Park, where we thought we’d celebrate spring, but instead froze. We discuss the travails of Jon Kelly’s Puck and Jessica Lessin’s The Information, how a Conde Nast barista secured an exclusive with Elon Musk’s estranged daughter, ABC’s Walmart-buying-TikTok scoop that was not, and British food. (You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and a bunch of others And if you have a bar, cafe or restaurant you’d like featured in the Breaker pod get in touch.)
Tuckered out
(Exclusive.) Emma Tucker’s makeover of the Wall Street Journal continues to upset weary journalists. First came the Performance Improvement Plans (known as PIPs), next a series of “scary letters” longtime staffers felt were intended to bully them into taking a buyout, then a Dow Jones executive dubbed “The Grim Reaper” (“People Business Partner” Farris Moustafa) who took part in meetings with employees targeted for termination, and the (now infamous case) of Tucker ordering a story be ‘desurfaced’.
Now, we have learned, Journal staffers in London who spent months organizing to form a union feel tricked by management. And staff are questioning the use of A.I, an emphasis on page views and a reliance on an audience engagement team that journalists fear will encourage clickbait.
At a town hall on Tuesday hosted by Tucker the power of…
Subscribe to Breaker to read the rest.
To get full access, and see all of this week's stories and scoops, subscribe here.
Upgrade