Mediagazer: Jason Rezaian of Washington Post and Wife Still Held (Thomas Erdbrink/New York Times)

10:45 PM ET, August 7, 2014

Top News:

Thomas Erdbrink / New York Times:

Jason Rezaian of Washington Post and Wife Still Held — Jason Rezaian of Washington Post and Wife Still Held — TEHRAN — Jason Rezaian knew he was being watched. A man on a motorcycle had been following him and his wife for weeks, his colleagues said.

Discussion: CNN, @p_zalewski, @mlcalderone, The Huffington Post, Media Law Prof Blog, Washington Post and Al-Monitor

Larry Dignan / ZDNet:

Amazon has an advantage over Google Express/B&N because it owns the customer relationship — Why Google Express, B&N vs. Amazon is apples and oranges — Summary: Google Express may prove to give Amazon a run, but ultimately the customer relationship will win out. Advantage Amazon.

Alexandra Alter / New York Times:
Google partners with Barnes & Noble for same-day book deliveries from stores in West LA, SF Bay Area, and Manhattan

Discussion: BGR, Digital Book World, Los Angeles Times, Re/code, Wired, Wall Street Journal, VentureBeat, SlashGear, InvestorPlace, Publishers Weekly, Engadget, GalleyCat, The Verge, Gigaom, TechCrunch, TIME, GeekWire, Daring Fireball, Bookseller news, The Next Web, @robneyer and @levie

Dylan Byers / Politico:

NYT recalibrates on “torture” for clear cases where interrogators inflicted pain on prisoners — N.Y. Times broadens use of ‘torture’ — The New York Times will now use the word “torture” to describe any incident in which interrogators “inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort …

Discussion: Guardian, Mediaite, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, @ggreenwald, @ggreenwald, @trevortimm, @jayrosen_nyu, @talkingnewmedia, @litthom, @attackerman, @froomkin, @emptywheel, @trevortimm, @jayrosen_nyu and @zaksaid

Joseph Lichterman / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Turning a profit in the Netherlands: How a Dutch hyperlocal network has grown — While lots of U.S. media companies are still struggling to figure out how to make hyperlocal news financially viable, in the Netherlands, a four-year-old network of hyperlocal sites began turning a profit earlier this year.

Variety:

News Corp ends first year away from Fox with mixed results: $.02/share income; $2.19B revenue — News Corp. Revenues Fall on Weaker Ad Sales, Subscriptions — Revenues at News Corp. fell during the most recent fiscal quarter on weaker subscription sales and a sluggish advertising market.

Discussion: Guardian, The Wrap, Capital New York, mUmBRELLA, Reuters, Bloomberg, Yahoo! Finance, Digital Book World and News Corp

Corey Hutchins / Columbia Journalism Review:

Gannett's changes bring excitement, some pain, and a full-time beer beat — A conversation with Joshua Awtry, the chain's top editor in the Carolinas — Yesterday was a busy one for Joshua Awtry. He was one of a handful of editors at Gannett-owned papers around the country who spent …

Discussion: Poynter, @jcrutchmer, @michaelngraff, @jawtry, @1brianmagee, @coreyhutchins, @jimclarkeap, @brianstelter, @ldncalling, Common Sense Journalism, Greenville News, JIMROMENESKO.COM and app.com

Dylan Byers / Politico:

Bloomberg to cancel ‘Political Capital with Al Hunt,’ lay off TV and print staff — Bloomberg Media has decided to cancel its weekly political talk show, “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” and will lay off several television and print employees in its Washington, D.C., bureau, POLITICO has learned.

Discussion: New York Times, TVNewser, Latest News & Headlines, @alexweprin, The Wrap and @dylanbyers

Peter Sterne / Capital New York:

CNN Politics eliminates more than a dozen positions in shift to video — More than a dozen employees in CNN's Digital Politics division learned yesterday that their positions will be eliminated at the end of the month, Capital has learned. — The employees were told that they would have to re-apply …

Discussion: Washington Post, @alexweprin, MediaWire Daily and FishbowlDC

Rob Price / Daily Dot:

Ashton Kutcher's viral site, A+, lifted content from BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Cracked, more — Is Ashton Kutcher's new viral empire built off stolen content? — Ashton Kutcher's flagship viral content site has republished large quantities of material from across the Internet apparently without …

Discussion: @antderosa, @bmorrissey, @_cooper, @bmorrissey and @tomgara

Nellie Andreeva / Deadline.com:

Nic Pizzolatto & HBO Refute ‘True Detective’ Plagiarism Claims — At the beginning of this week, with Emmy voting campaign in full swing, a story surfaced online that posed the question whether True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto, a nominee for writing the episode “The Secret Fate of All Life …

Discussion: Lovecraft eZine, Hollywood Reporter, NME News, Inside TV, The Wrap and Mashable

David Streitfeld / New York Times:

Plot Thickens as 900 Writers Battle Amazon — ROUND POND, Me. — Out here in the woods, at the end of not one but two dirt roads, in a shack equipped with a picture of the Dalai Lama, a high-speed data line and a copy of Thoreau's “Civil Disobedience,” Amazon's dream of dominating the publishing world has run into some trouble.

Discussion: @raju, @carolynryan, @neil_irwin, CNN, Bookseller news and Publishers Weekly

Eric Johnson / Re/code:

Twitch CEO: “We screwed up” with short notice on policy changes affecting archives and audio — Under Fire, Twitch CEO Says “We Screwed Up” Policy Announcement — When Twitch announced yesterday that it would start muting copyrighted music in on-demand videos, the Internet freaked out.

Discussion: TechCrunch and Electronista

Michael McWhertor / Polygon:
Twitch implements YouTube-like system for blocking copyrighted audio

Discussion: The Official Twitch Blog, Gamasutra, Wired.co.uk, SlashGear, hypebot, Plagiarism Today, Mashable, The Verge, The Official Twitch Blog, Techdirt, Wall Street Journal, GameSpot, Ars Technica, Boing Boing, The Next Web, Re/code and @chicago_lollie

Wall Street Journal:

Twitter takes lessons from Facebook in revamping ad fees — Advertisers Will Have More Options; Aim Is to Attract Small Businesses — Twitter Inc. is remodeling the way it charges advertisers, a move designed to court more small businesses in a bid to battle Facebook Inc.

Discussion: The Twitter Blog, MediaPost, Adweek, Wall Street Journal and The Next Web