In practice, they accept special offers to members of a loyalty club, or to people who book tickets early or keep a big balance on an account.

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That led to some fraud by Warshak, his mother, and his company, TCI Media, to get new banks to give them an account to keep charging new, unsuspecting customers.

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So next time, when you lose an account and a reporter calls for a statement, keep calm and be gracious.

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If you have a hobby, like raising English bulldogs or running triathlons, you can make an account that is devoted to that purpose, and keep your professional Twitter feed separate.

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You probably also have an emergency fund that you keep liquid in a high-interest savings account.

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That is because they are targeting the financial support explicitly at newsgathering rather than pouring it into the general budget where it may be frittered away on expense-account lunches and the like, or on trying to keep alive an increasingly obsolete technology, paper publishing.

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