Editor fired for Reddit shenanigans, BuzzFeed editors don’t shout

Good morning. Here are 10 media stories for the day before your long weekend. And from Sam Kirkland, your daily digital stories.

1. Editor fired for gaming Reddit: Rod “Slasher” Breslau was fired from CBS Interactive’s esports site OnGamers after he was “caught asking other users to post his stories to Reddit with specific headlines,” Patrick Howell O’Neill reports. Reddit has banned OnGamers as a result, resulting in a loss of half its traffic. (The Daily Dot) || Related: How to get your news site banned from Reddit (Poynter)
2. These media companies drug-test their employees: The Washington Post, The New York Times and McClatchy all want you to fill a cup. (Gawker)
3. Voice of America journalists don’t want to be mouthpieces: Their union endorsed a change to the organization’s charter that would require VOA to “actively support American policy,” Ron Nixon reports. (NYT)
4. NYPD’s public records policy gets law wrong: It says it has 10 days to reply. The law says 5. (Capital) || FREEKY FLASHBAKK: NYPD stops giving journalists crime reports at precincts (Poynter)
5. USPS cuts could affect weekly newspapers: National Newspaper Association President Robert M. Williams Jr. wrote Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe to protest USPS’ plan to close 82 mail-processing plants. “NNA firmly believes that mail service to rural and small-town America is critical to local economies. We will not stand by quietly when it is put at risk.” (The Rural Blog)
6. Murdoch money flows to Clintons: “Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox/News Corp has given more than $3 million to Bill and Hillary Clinton over the past 22 years.” (Politico)
7. The New York Times has already closed a lot of blogs: It has “ended or merged about half of the 60 or so blogs that it had at the high point two years ago, and there may be about another 10 to go,” Margaret Sullivan writes. But “nothing is on the chopping block at this moment.” (NYT) || The Times prizes collaboration, and good blogs emerge from “from isolation and lonely enterprise,” the blogger Erik Wemple writes. (The Washington Post)
8. BuzzFeed editors don’t shout: “It’s such an old-fashioned idea the idea that a newspaper editor has to be someone who marches up and down shouting,” BuzzFeed UK Editor Luke Lewis tells William Turvill. “I think that model has not got much longer left for this world.” He also says the publication has a culture “of experimentation,” “which means saying yes to pretty much every idea.” (PressGazette) || “The BuzzFeed formula — not just personalizing pop trivia, but treating it as an inexorable element of our emotional makeup — feels like the natural outcome of several decades of plug-in room deodorizers and Toyotathons and hamburger-slinging clowns.” (NYT)
9. Layoffs: The Wall Street Journal has laid off 20-40 people (NYT) || 22 people lost their jobs Wednesday when the Star Media Group announced it was closing The Grid, a Toronto magazine. (Toronto Star) || “Well, we gave it our best shot.” (@TheGridTO)
10. Job stuff, edited by Ben Mullin: Jonathan Hart, a founder of the Online News Association, has left his job as general counsel there to become the chief legal officer and general counsel for NPR. (ONA) His spot will be filled by Michael Kovaka. (Jim Brady) Shelley Acoca, who had been an editor of Fox News Magazine, will become the East Coast lifestyles and entertainment editor for the Associated Press. (AP)

Correction: This post originally misspelled Shelley Acoca’s first name.

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