Mediagazer: Wiki wars: Do Wikipedia's internal tiffs deter newcomers? (Joe Miller/BBC)

5:00 AM ET, August 8, 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, The Huffington Post, @mlcalderone, @p_zalewski, Media Law Prof Blog and Al-Monitor

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

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

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.

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, Inside TV, The Wrap, Mashable and NME News

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

After Sale to Disney, Maker Studios' Last Two Founders Leave — Lisa Donovan and Ben Donovan, who helped found YouTube network Maker Studios, have left the company. — Their departure, which was announced internally earlier this week, comes three months after Disney acquired Maker in a deal …

Discussion: @pkafka

Eriq Gardner / Hollywood Reporter: Maker Studios Claims Former CEO Owes $325K as Result of Disney Merger (Exclusive)

Joe Miller / BBC:

Wiki wars: Do Wikipedia's internal tiffs deter newcomers? — Berlin-born Knut has been at the centre of one of Wikipedia's fiercest edit battles — As WikiMania, the annual conference for the Wikipedia faithful, gets under way, there is bound to be much back-slapping over the successes …

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: Folio, Alliance for Audited Media and New York Times

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.

Discussion: BGR, SlashGear, Los Angeles Times and Wired

Lucia Moses / Digiday:

Throwback Thursday: Whatever happened to AOL's ‘Flipboard killer’? — In a nod to Throwback Thursday, Digiday decided to take a look at some of the prominent launches of recent years and what happened to them subsequently. (Please send me nominations.) First up: AOL Editions, which launched this week three years ago.

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

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.