Mediagazer: British blogger Brown Moses launches new site to train others in crowdsourced reporting (Mathew Ingram/Gigaom)

10:55 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

Todd Spangler / Variety:

AT&T-Chernin Group's Otter Media Online-Video Venture Acquires Creativebug for $10 Mil — Otter Media, the newly named online-video joint venture of AT&T and Chernin Group, has acquired how-to crafting video site Creativebug from Demand Media for $10 million in cash.

Discussion: Re/code

Mathew Ingram / Gigaom:

British blogger Brown Moses launches new site to train others in crowdsourced reporting — A little over two years ago, the blogger known as Brown Moses was an unemployed father of one, with no journalistic training and no expertise in military weaponry or the Arab world, living in his flat in Leicester …

Discussion: Journalism.co.uk and Motherboard

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

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.