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.

The Information and Puck, upstarts reporting on technology and power respectively, have both had high-profile departures recently. In today's edition we report out the backstory, and how leaders Jessica Lessin and Jon Kelly are navigating a tough subscription business.

Also this week, how ABC News published a strange — and apparently untrue — story about TikTok and Walmart (and who in their D.C. bureau was called on to help save face). And the secret weapon that helped Teen Vogue land its blockbuster interview with Elon Musk’s daughter, Vivian Wilson.

Tonight’s edition also takes in David Zaslav, Robert Gibbs, Jamie Dimon, Debra OConnell, Almin Karamehmedovic, Rick Klein, Jonathan Karl, Rachel Scott, Tara Palmeri, Teddy Schleifer, Tina Nguyen, Max Tcheyan, Joe Purzycki, Kim Masters, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Mark Zuckerberg, Will Lewis, Anna Wintour, Joanna Coles, Ben Sherwood, Mike Allen, Jim VandeHei and Roy Schwartz.

Mis-Information

(Exclusive.) On Friday two of The Information’s reporters, Julia Black and Paris Martineau, were told out of nowhere that they were losing their jobs.

Black and Martineau were seen as heavy hitters. They were part of the publication’s features team and wrote for its weekend section. Black had been given a new beat reporting on tech policy and the Trump administration just months ago.

“After ~ 5 years at The Information, i’ve been laid off, alongside 2/3rds of our features team. i am devastated,” Martineau tweeted Friday afternoon. She also noted that at her annual review a couple of months ago she received a raise along with her entire performance bonus.

Star New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin quoted that tweet, with the addition of the words “layoffs at The Information”. That drew the ire of The Information’s founder Jessica Lessin (who is always quick to fire off an X post).

“Ben that is inaccurate,” she wrote. “Please check your facts as I would expect you to.” Mullin responded with Martineau’s X post saying she had been laid off. “Feel free to call for comment if you ever want the facts that I am able to share,” Lessin posted. “Of course I wouldn’t comment on specific performance issues around a particular reporter but there are no layoffs."  (Lessin would only tell us via text "No layoffs as I said.")

What is playing out behind the scenes at Lessin’s Information is not dissimilar to subscription growing pains at Jon Kelly’s Puck where we have learned co-founder…

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