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Fox News: ‘We Will Unequivocally Defend’ Rosen Against ‘Chilling’ DOJ Investigation (TVNewser)
Fox News executive VP of news Michael Clemente released the following statement on Monday to TVNewser with regard to James Rosen being targeted by the Department of Justice: “We are outraged to learn [Monday] that James Rosen was named a criminal co-conspirator for simply doing his job as a reporter. In fact, it is downright chilling. We will unequivocally defend his right to operate as a member of what up until now has always been a free press.” FishbowlNY According to court documents, the DOJ used Rosen’s Justice Department security badge to watch when he came and went from the State Department, acquired a search warrant for his personal emails, and monitored his phone calls with a government advisor suspected of leaking intelligence. The New Yorker / News Desk Rosen was not charged with any crime, but it is unprecedented for the government, in an official court document, to accuse a reporter of breaking the law for conducting the routine business of reporting on government secrets. TVNewser The AP made waves last week after it was revealed that the DOJ targeted the personal and professional phone lines of hundreds of journalists in an apparent attempt to determine who leaked information. Slate They’re going after him not as a witness to a crime — nor as a pressure tactic to get him to give up his source (in this case, the source has already been caught) — but rather, in the words of a Justice Department affidavit, as “an aider, an abettor, and/or a co-conspirator.” In short, as someone who might be indicted under the Espionage Act. This has never happened in this country. (Even in the Pentagon Papers case, several newspapers were served injunctions not to publish stories, but no reporter or editor was ever investigated, much less tried, as a co-conspirator.) If the prosecutors go through with their threat, the entire enterprise of national security journalism — which inherently involves uncovering secrets, to some degree — will be in jeopardy. Politico / Politico 44 White House press secretary Jay Carney wouldn’t comment Monday on the ongoing national security leaks case involving Rosen, after a weekend news report detailing the Justice Department’s surveillance of him. “I can’t comment on an ongoing criminal investigation, nor should I,” Carney said in response to one of several questions on the case, offering a similar answer each time.

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For five years, Josh Stewart (pictured) covered city, county and state issues for The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. Eric Hartley meanwhile was also once a metro columnist there, additionally reporting at separate times on cops and the courts. Now, both work for the Orange County Register.

Stewart is the paper’s new Tustin reporter, while Hartley is covering police and court matters for the recently expanded community section The Current, which blankets Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. From today’s announcements:

“I was attracted to the Register because it is the only print operation that’s growing both its coverage and staff and has the backing to do solid journalism,” Stewart said. “In a very simple way, it is a departure from the ‘do more with less’ double-speak that’s become the vernacular throughout the industry, and it’s a move [that will lead to] better papers for readers.”

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If you’re looking for a nifty illustration of the “next” tech generation, click here. On the page are thumbnails of the 2013 Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers fellows for design and engineering. Roll over any of the photos and they will flip to reveal where that person is interning this summer in Silicon Valley as part of the program.

There’s Academy of Art University design student Heather Tomkins (pictured), tapped for Klout; USC engineering student Katherine Anderson, already at Chegg; and several dozen others from UCSD, Pomona College, Stanford and elsewhere. This year, the KPCB competition received nearly 2,000 applications from more than 200 universities and conducted in excess of 450 interviews. Here is how Tomkins got to Klout:

Tomkins submitted her Academy thesis project, an interactive children’s book for the iPad called The Bear and the Picture Camera. She designed the book in a way that allows the reader and the main character to explore and draw together — a type of combination she felt was missing in the iPad children’s book market.

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Remember that brief March 1 New York Post “Page Six” item? Here’s a quick refresher:

Jimmy Kimmel is already being lined up to host next year’s Oscars, we’re told. One source said, “Jimmy is favored to host the Oscars next year; ABC has been pushing him for the role.” The late-night host already seems a shoo-in for the job after he earned his best post-awards show ratings on Sunday night.

We’ve been saying for several years that the logical host for the annual ABC-TV telecast is the one within walking-commute distance. Now that Seth MacFarlane has confirmed what pretty much everyone in Hollywood already knew, it’s hopefully only a matter of very little time before Kimmel finally gets his outside-the-special-box shot.

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Timely: This weekend’s May 18 performance at the ACME Comedy Theatre of Kelly Carlin’s acclaimed one-woman show A Carlin Home Companion attended by FishbowlLA came on the heels of dad George‘s posthumous birthday (May 12) and ahead of his talented daughter turning the big 5-0 (June 15).

Classic: Carlin intersperses two lively acts with some powerful and selective sourcing of dad’s famous comedy bits. Watching a clean-shaven young George crack up Johnny Carson as hippie weatherman Al Sleet on a 1966 Tonight Show broadcast is especially fun in this context. (Carlin made his first appearance on the program in 1962, pre-Carson, with guest host Mort Sahl.)

Shocking: The play is at times a frank and telling look at Kelly’s struggles growing up as the only child of a road-warrior dad and alcoholic mom. At one point, she reveals the shame and secrecy of a teenage romance with a boy who abused her emotionally and physically. The bittersweet punchline here is that the boyfriend’s (unnamed) mom was an Academy Award winner for Best Actress!

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Over 70 percent of Wired is freelance written, and, once you’ve scored a byline, you’re well on your way to landing more assignments. Senior editor Sarah Fallon urges writers to think of Wired‘s coverage as a continuum: “Science leads to technologies. Technologies spawn businesses and whole industries. Businesses flourish and end up influencing and changing culture,” she said.

Based in San Francisco, Wired has a laid-back but focused West Coast feel and a sensibility that welcomes everyone from the worldly generalist to the Vine junkie. There’s plenty of room for freelancers, too, so long as you’re pitching fresh meat. “We want to cover stories that you wouldn’t find in any other magazine,” Fallon explained. “If you’re going to pitch something mainstream, make sure you have a unique angle.”

For more info, read How To Pitch: Wired.
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Yahoo! Tumblrs for Cool: Board Approves $1.1 Billion Deal as Expected (AllThingsD)
The Yahoo! board has approved a massive $1.1 billion all-cash deal to buy Tumblr. It’s not clear when the official vote was taken, but sources close to the board said the acquisition was a foregone conclusion and was unanimously approved by the directors of the Silicon Valley Internet giant. The deal will likely be announced Monday morning, said numerous sources. Business Insider Marissa Mayer has made her first big move as CEO of Yahoo!. She’s buying a social networking site with a younger audience and a ton of page views. Now it’s time to monetize the thing. Tumblr has just $13 million in revenue right now. It should be able to increase that revenue following the model of Twitter and Facebook. BuzzFeed When Yahoo! was founded, Tumblr’s most important demographic wasn’t even born. This — not profit or monthly active user numbers or corporate image-making — is what explains why Yahoo! wants Tumblr. GigaOM The painful fact is that Yahoo! doesn’t just look desperate — in many ways it is desperate. Mayer has made some changes since she took over the ailing former Web portal, including the acquisition of Summly and a number of other mobile-focused startups and services, but the company still needs to make some aggressive moves if it is going to jump-start any growth at all. AllThingsD If you write about Tumblr as a business, you are required to note that Tumblr has a lot of porn. So why isn’t that an issue for Yahoo!?

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The 4 Queens Hotel and Casino in downtown Las Vegas has been in operation since 1966. The queen of AP courtroom reporting, Linda Deutsch, has been with the wire service since 1967. This week, the twain of these two institutions delightfully met.

Per Norm Clarke’s latest column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the LA-based Deutsch was having dinner Wednesday night at hotel restaurant Hugo’s Cellar, forgetting that she was due at that time for a BBC Radio phone interview about O.J. Simpson‘s latest courtroom theatrics. The restaurant was too noisy and there was no time to get back to her own hotel room. So instead, Deutsch gamely did the following:

Hugo’s manager Richard Assalone, who has worked at some of the best restaurants in town, came up with a corker of a solution: He borrowed a chair from a dinner table and gave Deutsch the coolest seat in town — inside Hugo’s 55-degree wine cellar.

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If you’re planning on staying home tonight (and have DIRECTV), one of the very best ways to kick off your weekend is available via the satellite cabler’s Audience Network channel 239. At 10 p.m. PT, the live concert series Guitar Center Sessions returns.

Unusually, this weekend’s episode featuring The Smashing Pumpkins and next Friday’s performance by Frank Turner were taped at SXSW in Austin. But after that, all the way through to the program’s 50th episode on July 26 featuring Dhani Harrison’s THENEWNO2, it’s back to the chain’s flagship location in Hollywood:

“Today, more than ever before, any artist, established or up and coming, is working within a new convoluted paradigm full of challenges,” says show host and backstage interviewer Nic Harcourt via recent press release. “The new episodes of Guitar Center Sessions feature a truly diverse group of artists, all sharing the ups and downs of their careers in the interviews and delivering blistering performances on stage.”

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Although KABC 790 AM host Peter Tilden will be at the center of it, he’s wrangled some major TV-side reinforcements.

Acting as grand marshal for this Sunday’s motorcycle ride raising money for the MS Hope Foundation is Sons of Anarchy star Ron Perlman. And once the group makes its way from Gladstone’s in Malibu to The Canyon club in Agoura Hills, they will be entertained by John Corbett (NCIS) with his band and Grammy-winning Hawaiian steel guitarist Ken Emerson.

Tickets for the 10 a.m. ride and noon Canyon celebration are $25 if purchased beforehand and $35 the day of. There are two earlier 8 a.m. starting points – Glendale Harley on San Fernando Road in Glendale and California Harley Dealership on the PCH in Harbor City.

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