Mediagazer: Can Berkeleyside turn an engaged community into a profitable membership program? (Caroline O'Donovan/Nieman Lab)

12:10 PM ET, November 7, 2014

Top News:

FBI says agent impersonated AP reporter — 1 photo — SEATTLE (AP) — FBI Director James Comey says an agent impersonated an Associated Press reporter during a 2007 criminal investigation, a ruse the news organization says could undermine its credibility.

Discussion: New York Times, Poynter, Latest News & Headlines, NBC News, UPI, BuzzFeed, New York Magazine, Sky News, RT, International Business Times, @ap_corpcomm, @csoghoian, @onekade, Boing Boing, seattlepi.com and @fbajak

Ben Smith / BuzzFeed:

BuzzFeed doesn't do clickbait, defined as under-delivering what's over-promised in a headline — Why BuzzFeed Doesn't Do Clickbait — You won't believe this one weird trick. — Jon Stewart was asked about BuzzFeed and Vice the other day, and had this to say:

Caroline Davies / Guardian:

Missing: 3 million News International emails — All emails covering her period as editor removed after Rebekah Brooks changed company's email deletion policy in 2010 — Three million emails at News International are missing after Rebekah Brooks changed the company's email deletion policy, a jury heard.

Discussion: @chaabanrabih, @leftunityuk, @hackedoffhugh, @paullewismoney and The Independent

Ewan Palmer / International Business Times:
Phone Hacking: Former News Of The World Editor Ian Edmondson Jailed for Eight Months

Discussion: Press Gazette, Digital Spy, Guardian, TIME, BBC, Sky News, Global News and Telegraph

Marc Graser / Variety:

Disney Downplays a la Carte Plans as ESPN Preps OTT Services — Disney chief Bob Iger likes experimenting with digital platforms. Yet while ESPN — one of Disney's biggest moneymakers — is getting ready to launch over-the-top services to stream more sports programming …

Karma Allen / CNBC:
Walt Disney earnings: 89 cents per share on revenue of $12.39B, both in-line with estimates

Discussion: Multichannel News, @jboorstin, @danielhsqr, @benfritz, @benfritz, Bloomberg, Reuters and The Wrap

Nina Shapiro / Seattle Weekly:

The Perks, Pitfalls, and Paradoxes of Amazon Publishing — Amid a boycott and bicoastal culture clash, Amazon has created a new model of publishing. Where does that leave authors? — One day in 2012, Megan Chance, a historical-fiction writer from the Kitsap Peninsula …

Discussion: @irisblasi, @groveatlantic, @nilanjanaroy and Melville House Books

Caroline O'Donovan / Nieman Lab:

Can Berkeleyside turn an engaged community into a profitable membership program? — If you were a resident of Berkeley, California with free time on your hands and a sense of curiosity, you might have found yourself a couple of weekends ago at Uncharted, an “ideas festival” put on by local news site Berkeleyside.

Discussion: @jan10vdh, @ceodonovan, @jayrosen_nyu and @niemanlab

Shalini Ramachandran / Wall Street Journal:

In Q3 pay-TV lost 179K customers, compared to 83K last year, as cable and satellite companies see move to digital — Pay-TV ‘Cord Cutting’ Accelerates — Subscriber Defections Begin to Hit Satellite TV; Price of Bills Cited — The pay-TV industry contracted in the third quarter …

Discussion: MediaPost, Hollywood Reporter, Media Life Magazine and Multichannel News

Joe Pompeo / Capital New York:

HuffPost defends disciplinary actions against reporters, editors — The Huffington Post's newsroom is on edge following recent incidents in which several employees were disciplined and a major story was put on pause. — Two of the incidents involved journalists who were suspended after publishing sensitive articles.

Discussion: @joepompeo and @genlakhyenrab

Lene Bech Sillesen / Columbia Journalism Review:

Justin Hall's 20-year-old website shows how opportunities in online journalism slowly developed — Justin Hall's 20-year-old website shows how opportunities in online journalism slowly developed — Justin Hall runs a blog that has landed him several jobs in journalism.

Tom Cheredar / VentureBeat:

As book publishers go Hollywood, self-publishing startup Blurb launches a marketplace for hiring collaborators — Writing isn't very difficult, regardless of who you are. Writing something that people actually want to read, however, is extremely hard — especially if it's a book.

Discussion: Publishers Weekly, Good E-Reader, Digital Book World, The Next Web and Talking New Media

Paul Farhi / Washington Post:

White House background briefings: Good journalism or anonymous government spin? — Every so often, a group of handpicked journalists gets the equivalent of a tap on the shoulder from a White House functionary. They're invited to a background briefing, one of Washington's most common …