Mediagazer: Plot Thickens as 900 Writers Battle Amazon (David Streitfeld/New York Times)

1:40 PM ET, August 8, 2014

Top News:

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.

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

News Corp. holds firm on value of print — News Corp., the global publishing conglomerate chaired by Rupert Murdoch, reaffirmed its commitment to print in the face of ongoing financial pressures that have upended the industry as more readers migrate from paper to digital platforms.

Discussion: MediaWire Daily and @niemanlab

Variety:
News Corp ends first year away from Fox with mixed results: $.02/share income; $2.19B revenue

Discussion: Guardian, Hollywood Reporter, BBC, The Wrap, Forbes, The Huffington Post, @lisaocarroll, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance, Poynter, Guardian, mUmBRELLA and News Corp

Natalie Andrews / Wall Street Journal:

Pentagon Announces Iraq Airstrikes With a Tweet — News first broke of the U.S. starting air strikes on Iraq militants in an unexpected way - it was announced by the Pentagon press secretary's Twitter account. — The account, associated with Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby …

Discussion: Gawker, Reuters, Boing Boing, NBC News, The Verge, Mashable and US News

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Coming to the Internet: Shows From CBS That You Won't See on CBS — CBS is working on shows that you won't see on CBS. Instead, the plan is for you to see them on the Internet, via video services like Netflix or Amazon's Prime Instant Video. — If that happens, it means CBS will have opened …

Discussion: Deadline.com, VentureBeat and Capital New York

Michael Calderone / The Huffington Post:

How Vice News Got Unprecedented Access To The Islamic State — NEW YORK — When The New York Times reported last month on life in Raqqa, Syria, the de facto capital of the extremist group the Islamic State, the paper didn't reveal its reporter's identity or that of anyone interviewed out a fear of retaliation.

Discussion: VICE News, New York Times, The New York Observer, Business Insider, @mlcalderone, @jayrosen_nyu, The Daily Caller, The Week and New York Magazine

Nikhil Pahwa / MediaNama:

The Hindu asks its journalists to avoid tweeting links from competing publications — The Hindu, a Chennai based English and Tamil language daily newspaper, has asked its journalists, with immediate effect, to avoid sharing or commenting on the content of competing publications, and ensure …

Discussion: Poynter, The Newsminute, @mathewi, @nicdawes, @nixxin, @ankushatwork and @rupabhshukla

Capital New York:

The 60-second interview: Derek Willis, reporter, the Times' The Upshot — CAPITAL: You joined The Upshot in February (in your hiring note, David Leonhardt called you “the intellectual father of the Times' Interactive News department.") How are things going so far? What are your primary responsibilities?

Discussion: @mathewi, @clockwerks, @jacqui and @jeremymbarr

Alexandra Alter / New York Times:

Publisher Hachette's 3-Way Deal to Acquire Perseus Fails — The Hachette Book Group's deal to acquire the independent publisher Perseus has collapsed after months of negotiations, representatives from each company said on Thursday. — The three-way agreement among Hachette …

Discussion: Publishers Lunch, Reuters, @carlzimmer, Bookseller news and Publishers Weekly

Andrew Beaujon / Poynter:

Digital editions up slightly at U.S. magazines — Digital edition circulation rose at U.S. magazines in the first half of 2014, according to the Alliance for Audited Media's most recent report. But digital editions represented only 3.8 percent of total circulation, compared with 3.3 percent in June 2013.

Discussion: AdAge, Folio, Alliance for Audited Media and New York Times

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.

Discussion: Street Fight

Calvin Reid / Publishers Weekly:

Simon & Schuster Second Quarter Sales Rise 12% — Publishing revenue at Simon & Schuster rose 12% in the second quarter of 2014, with the publisher crediting the growth to such print bestsellers as Hillary Clinton's Hard Choices and Stephen King's Mr. Mercedes.

Discussion: Bookseller news

Lisa O'Carroll / Guardian:

Ex-Sun reporter charged over stolen phone tells of how career was destroyed — Ben Ashford tells Old Bailey jury that he was sacked by the Daily Mail in the US and had his visa cancelled after his arrest — A former Sun reporter charged with criminal offences in relation to a stolen phone …

Discussion: @lisaocarroll