Mediagazer: Amazon's Tactics Confirm Its Critics' Worst Suspicions (Farhad Manjoo/New York Times)

8:35 PM ET, May 23, 2014

Top News:

Amazon escalates battle with Hachette, refuses coming book orders, lists some as unavailable — Amazon Escalates Its Battle Against Hachette — Amazon, under fire in much of the literary community for energetically discouraging customers from buying books from the publisher Hachette, has abruptly escalated the battle.

Farhad Manjoo / New York Times:

Amazon's Tactics Confirm Its Critics' Worst Suspicions — Amazon is confirming its critics' worst fears and it is an ugly spectacle to behold. — For years, authors and publishers have warned that Amazon, Jeff Bezos' book-selling giant, would one day use its power for ill. Sure, so far …

Discussion: Mashable, @edyong209, @fmanjoo and @seyitaylor

Laura Hazard Owen / Gigaom:
Amazon takes away pre-orders on many Hachette titles, messes with search, categories and recommendations

Discussion: @jherskowitz, @lilithsaintcrow, @laurahazardowen, @victoriastrauss, NPR, Publishers Weekly, @irastoll, @craiggrannell, @bobbie, @jeffjohnroberts and @sarahw

Yinka Adegoke / Billboard:

Apple-Beats deal delayed due to discussions over Beats Music valuation, Dre/Iovine roles in Apple, outrage over Dre/Tyrese video, more — Five Things Holding Up the Apple-Beats Deal — When news broke on Thursday May 8 that Apple was in talks to buy Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre's Beats Electronics …

Discussion: Business Insider, @jeffcgd, Daring Fireball, AppleInsider, @benparr, SlashGear, @caseynewton, @yinkawrites and @pkafka

Amy Sawitta Lefevre / Reuters:

Thai media chafe under post-coup blackout — Television screens went blue and up flashed the army's emblem, normal programming stopped and Thailand held its breath. For anyone looking forward to their favourite show, it was going to be a long wait. — Half-an-hour later …

Discussion: Prachatai English, Eurasia Review, Variety, Inquirer News, Mashable and KOIN-TV

Guardian:

Women dominate shortlist to succeed Lord Patten at BBC — Dame Marjorie Scardino among potential candidates for role of BBC Trust chairman as rumours swirl over body's future — Government officials are weighing up a shortlist of replacements for Lord Patten as chairman of the BBC Trust …

David Usborne / The Independent:
Dame Marjorie Scardino: The tycoon tipped to head the BBC Trust and a city that will never forgive her

Discussion: @kevin_maguire

Adam Weinstein / Gawker:

Why Did Wikileaks Name “Country X” When Glenn Greenwald Wouldn't? — 1,538g — Earlier this week, the Intercept revealed another bombshell from Edward Snowden's cache of government secrets: The NSA soaks up all the mobile phone calls from the Bahamas and another country.

Discussion: The Verge, WikiLeaks, VentureBeat, The Daily Caller, Boing Boing, Vanity Fair and Engadget

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Gizmodo editor-in-chief Geoff Manaugh ‘did not integrate well’ and is gone — A memo Friday from Gawker Media Group Editorial Director Joel Johnson says Geoff Manaugh, Gizmodo's top editor, “did not integrate well with the structure both within his team and the company as a whole” and is no longer with the company.

Discussion: The Awl, FishbowlNY, Washington Post, JIMROMENESKO.COM, @nicknotned, @thestalwart, @dcseifert, @abeaujon and @clockwerks

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Bloomberg gives its native ads a data spin — Data journalism is getting the native ad treatment. — Bloomberg LP, best known for its financial news and information, has launched a new suite of native ad products that tap into its data-crunching abilities.

Discussion: @kevglobal, @niemanlab and @raju

Emil Protalinski / The Next Web:

YouTube is building a mobile app for creators, a feature to let fans donate funds, and crowdsourced subtitles — YouTube today announced a new initiative called Creator Preview, a video series in which the Google-owned company shares what features it is working on for creators.

Discussion: YouTube Creator Blog, 9to5Mac, TechCrunch, The Verge and @ytcreators

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Dish Offers Six Months of Free Netflix to New Customers — Dish Network signed a deal with Netflix under which new subscribers who take the satcaster's Hopper digital video recorder will receive six months free of the subscription VOD service. — The pact isn't as deep as Netflix would like …

Discussion: Home Media Magazine and @awallenstein

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Twitter Experiments With a New Video-Sharing Feature — So it doesn't look like Twitter is going to get into the audio business, after all. But Twitter has liked video for quite a while. — And it looks like it's experimenting with a new product that could encourage more people to use …

Discussion: Ubergizmo, SocialTimes, Tech Digest, Expert Reviews and Engadget

Robert Mackey / New York Times:

Twitter Agrees to Block ‘Blasphemous’ Tweets in Pakistan — At least five times this month, a Pakistani bureaucrat who works from a colonial-era barracks in Karachi, just down the street from the former home of his country's secularist founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, asked Twitter to shield …

WashPostPR / Washington Post:

The Washington Post Finalizes Selection of New Headquarters — The Post's new headquarters will be located at 1301 K Street, NW in Washington. (Photo courtesy of Hines) — Lease for One Franklin Square in Washington, D.C. — The Washington Post today announced it has chosen developer Hines …

Discussion: Poynter and @raju

Todd Spangler / Variety:

Fox Upgrades Video App to Add Personalized Show Recommendations — Broadcaster licenses technology from U.K.-based ThinkAnalytics for new Apple iOS app — Fox Broadcasting has released a new version of its Fox Now video app for Apple devices that suggests shows users might want to watch based …

Michael Kinsley / New York Times:

In review of Greenwald book, Kinsley says government should choose which secrets to release — ‘No Place to Hide,’ by Glenn Greenwald — “My position was straightforward,” Glenn Greenwald writes. “By ordering illegal eavesdropping, the president had committed crimes and should be held accountable for them.”