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Assange's plea deal doesn't create an official precedent, but he still had to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act for a “crime” outlets commit regularly — Instead of just dropping the case, the Biden administration got a guilty plea and set a dangerous tone for reporters everywhere
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Julian Assange pleads guilty to a conspiracy charge as part of a deal with the US, letting him go free after spending five years in a British prison — A plane believed to be carrying WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday. Assange will plead guilty to a felony charge …
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Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich appears in a Russian Court for the start of his closed-door trial on espionage charges, which he denies — Proceedings lack due process, at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Moscow — Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich appeared …
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In the last month, Sam Stein, Burgess Everett, and now Jack Shafer have decided to leave Politico; sources: Alex Ward and Lara Seligman are leaving for the WSJ — The Scoop — The unfolding internal crisis at the Washington Post has obscured drama playing out across the river in Rosslyn, Virginia.


SCOTUS declines to impose limits on the way Biden administration may communicate with social media platforms in the First Amendment case of Murthy v. Missouri — The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Wednesday to impose limits on the way President Joe Biden's administration may communicate …
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Australia's Seven West axes three top executives amid 150 job cuts at the company, as its commercial deal with Meta, estimated to be worth ~$15M annually, ends — Seven West Media chief executive Jeff Howard has lost some of his most senior lieutenants including the head of sport …
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Sources: The New York Times is working to move its top podcasts behind a paywall, with the goal of eventually tying most, if not all, to a subscription service — Publisher plans to limit access to shows like ‘Serial’ to subscribers, cap number of free episodes of ‘The Daily’
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Nonresponses from sources to requests for comment in news stories are rife, and growing rapidly; some PR reps defend the silence, depending on circumstances — As the author of CNN.com's daily newsletter about the news and entertainment industries, Oliver Darcy regularly reports …


Reddit says it will update its robots.txt “to be as clear as possible” that companies using an automated agent to access Reddit need to abide by its terms — The warning comes after reports that AI companies regularly ignore instructions not to scrape.
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MEDIANAMA, Reddit Upvoted, Reuters and TechCrunch, more at Techmeme »


Independent film company A24 raised $100M led by Josh Kushner's Thrive Entertainment at a $3.5B valuation, up 40% from its first fundraising in 2022 — The movie house that produced ‘Uncut Gems’, ‘Lady Bird’ and other critical hits is suddenly a favourite with investors too
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IndieWire, Los Angeles Times, Variety, The Wrap, @kateclarktweets, The Information, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter


Lost In raised a $4M seed and acquired a Berlin-based travel guidebook publisher to build a travel media brand focused on the “premium economy traveler” — Exit Content Preview … - The Los Angeles-based company has nine staffers, including the three co-founders …


Adult content platform Slushy raised $10.2M in seed funding and says it reached 1M users and grew its creator base by 40% to 10,000 in Q1 2024 — Slushy has raised $10.2 million for its creator monetization platform which was purpose-built to help creators grow their community and consumers to form authentic connections.
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Axios, The Information and Washington Examiner