Mediagazer: Publisher Hachette's 3-Way Deal to Acquire Perseus Fails (Alexandra Alter/New York Times)

8:55 AM 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.

Discussion: BBC, @nytimesbits, @sarahw, @suzannespecnyt, @raju, @nilofer, @neil_irwin, @suzannespecnyt, @carolynryan, CNN, Bookseller news and Publishers Weekly

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, @lisaocarroll, Yahoo! Finance, mUmBRELLA, Guardian, Poynter, News Corp and Bloomberg

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.

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: @tehranbureau, CNN, The Huffington Post, @mlcalderone, @p_zalewski and Media Law Prof Blog

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 and Capital New York

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

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, Publishers Weekly and Bookseller news

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: Mashable, @mlcalderone, The Daily Caller and VICE News

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, NME News, Inside TV, The Wrap and Mashable

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 …

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