Mediagazer: Inside Amazon's pricing war with Hachette, which is making some publishers and authors anxious (David Streitfeld/New York Times)

10:45 AM ET, July 14, 2014

Top News:

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

Inside Amazon's pricing war with Hachette, which is making some publishers and authors anxious — Amazon, a Friendly Giant as Long as It's Fed — Vincent Zandri hails from the future. He is a novelist from the day after tomorrow, when Amazon has remade the worlds of writing, printing …

Discussion: @smwat, @themediaisdying, @brucenussbaum, @hblodget, Digital Book World, @jason_kint, @arhomberg, @intpublishers, @cdixon, @jayrosen_nyu, @davidstreitfeld, Silicon Republic, @tonyhorwitz, @om and Business Insider

Ryan Roslansky / Official LinkedIn Blog:

LinkedIn acquires news monitoring tool, Newsle — Stay In The Know On Your Network: Newsle Joins The LinkedIn Family — We know LinkedIn is a place you visit to stay up-to-speed on your network, showcase and strengthen your professional identity and read content to glean professional insights …

Discussion: TechCrunch, VentureBeat, @jamescham, @bfeld, @digiphile, @robpegoraro, The Next Web, @danroth, @jeffjarvis, @jeffweiner, @pkafka and Mashable

Kara Bloomgarden-Smoke / The New York Observer:

Time chief content officer Norman Pearlstine on the spinoff, The Awl, Twitter, and more — Norm Pearlstine on Standing in Checkout Lines and The Awl — Norm Pearlstine. (Illustration by Paul Kisselev) … What does the spinoff mean for Time Inc.? We were very much defined …

Discussion: @annehelen and The Corsair

Jonathan Mahler / New York Times:

Biggest Scorer in World Cup? Maybe Univision — Months before the first whistle of the World Cup, Juan Carlos Rodriguez, the president of Univision Communications's sports division, presented his engineers with a challenge: Could they figure out how to beam its soccer broadcasts …

Discussion: TVNewser, @felixsalmon, Mediaite, Forbes, Re/code and bookforum.com

Michael Cieply / New York Times:

BitTorrent launching paywall and using crowdfunding to finance new sci-fi series — BitTorrent to Try a Paywall and Crowdfunding — LOS ANGELES — This might be the latest twist on crowdfunding — or the web equivalent of seeking a ransom. — BitTorrent, a purveyor of file-sharing technology …

Discussion: The Verge, @katikrause, The Next Web, @cryptogeeks, TorrentFreak and Engadget

Reuters:

Exclusive: YouTube weighs funding efforts to boost premium content - sources — (Reuters) - YouTube has embarked on a new round of discussions with Hollywood and independent producers to fund premium content, two sources with knowledge of the talks told Reuters, a move that could bolster …

Discussion: @pkafka, VatorNews and Beyond Search

David Carr / New York Times:

Hulu receives exclusive rights to stream South Park immediately after broadcast and entire back catalog in deal worth $80M+ — Hulu to Stream ‘South Park’ as More Players Jostle for Online Rights — While the media moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, jockeyed for parking spaces for their jets …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, @nyindieguy, Wall Street Journal, @peterlattman, South Park, Hulu Blog, @johnshankman, @jswatz, VentureBeat, Gizmodo, @benfritz, @pkafka, @nicholasfrazee, @fmanjoo, @kreissdaniel, @katherinefink, The Verge, Re/code and Engadget

Mark Sweney / Guardian:

News Corp calls for piracy crackdown in Australia — Rupert Murdoch company requests toughening of laws to force internet service providers to act on copyright theft — News Corp, owner of film studio 20th Century Fox, has called for the toughening of piracy laws in Australia.

Discussion: The Register, @myriamrobin and TorrentFreak

Corey Hutchins / Columbia Journalism Review:

Newspaper revenue experiment throwdown: crowdfunding vs underwriting — Crowdfunded beats might not work, but there are good reasons for newspapers to give them a try — CHARLESTON, SC — Last week, we wrote about a deal between the News & Record in Greensboro, NC, and a local arts group …

John McDuling / Quartz:

The music industry's newfangled growth business: vinyl records — The equation facing the music business is now well understood: Sales of CDs and digital music downloads are in what looks like a death spiral, while streaming music services are adding subscribers and increasing revenues but not yet profits.

Discussion: @prasanto and @tedgioia

Kara Swisher / Re/code:

Speculation mounts of an AOL-Yahoo merger; Mayer interested in HuffPo — Two Years and Still Stuck in a Revenue Rut, Will Yahoo's Mayer Bite the AOL Bullet? — Maybe AOL and Yahoo will merge. Maybe not. Maybe they should. Maybe they shouldn't. — But for the erudition of reporters …

Discussion: Business Insider, @kenli729, @mccarthyryanj, @hblodget, @jyarow and @mathewi

Mike Rose / Gamasutra:

Weighing the ethics of video game makers paying YouTubers for coverage — Pay for Play: The ethics of paying for YouTuber coverage — Ethics are regularly a hot topic in video game criticism. — Whether it's readers accusing big-name consumer game sites of taking money for positive reviews …

Discussion: @yogscastlewis, Polygon and @raveofravendale

Craig Calcaterra:

Sports Illustrated gets modern media; gets criticized for it — The LeBron James news dominated sports media for the past several days. Everyone — even people who don't much care about basketball — was interested in it at least on some level. Even if it was only to joke, snark and/or join in some fun collective happening.