Mediagazer: Matt Lauer getting $25 million to stay on ‘Today,’ source says (Verne Gay/Newsday)

10:00 AM ET, March 9, 2012

Top News:

New Republic Gets an Owner Steeped in New Media — The newest owner of The New Republic magazine is Chris Hughes, a new-media guru who co-founded Facebook and helped to run the online organizing machine for Barack Obama's presidential campaign. — Mr. Hughes's purchase of a majority stake …

Discussion: Betabeat, paidContent, eMedia Vitals, The Huffington Post and Business Insider

The New Republic:

Home News: A Letter to TNR Readers from Chris Hughes — To the Readers of The New Republic: — Nearly 100 years ago, the founding editors of The New Republic wrote these words to introduce their inaugural issue: … A century later, people are once again skeptical that quality journalism can flourish.

Discussion: The Awl, Poynter, NPR, The Next Web and Business Insider

Tim Carmody / Wired:

I Think It Would Be Fun To Run the New Republic: Chris Hughes as Charles Foster Kane — A young man comes into a great fortune. He could invest that fortune and his own formidable energy in profitable ventures: gold mines, hedge funds or Silicon Valley startups.

Press Gazette:

First official figures give The Sun Sunday 3.2m circ — ABC today released the first official figures for The Sun Sunday - showing a launch circulation of 3,213,613 for the new title. In its final month before it was closed the News of the World had an average monthly circulation of 2,667,428.

Discussion: Guardian

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:

Sun on Sunday: £45m a year down versus the News of the World? — Early financial estimates demonstrate the ongoing cost of the phone-hacking affair for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp — Week three is the big test for the Sun's Sunday edition. You couldn't have missed its promotional campaign …

Guardian:

Ofcom steps up test of James Murdoch's fitness to keep BSkyB role — Media regulator's Project Apple examines phone-hacking evidence to decide on 39-year-old's stewardship — Ofcom has stepped up its investigation into whether James Murdoch is a “fit and proper” person to sit on the board of BSkyB …

Discussion: Reuters

Dominic Ponsford / Press Gazette:
Injunction threat over Will Lewis security blog post

Discussion: Neville Thurlbeck

Stephen Parkinson / Telegraph:
Phone hacking: can these journalists really get a fair trial?

Discussion: CJR, Guardian and Jon Slattery

Erik Larson / Bloomberg:
News Corp. Alleged to Hack Family Priest's Line

Discussion: The Next Web and Guardian

Josh Halliday / Guardian: Sun and NoW publisher had ‘enthusiastic involvement’ with police

Dan Sabbagh / Guardian:
Trinity Mirror journalists may be victims of NoW phone hacking - police

Discussion: Big News Network.com

Amy Chozick / Media Decoder:

Comcast Declines to Offer Netflix to Its Customers — Netflix may have hit a snag as it negotiates with cable operators. — Comcast, the country's largest cable company, says it has no interest in offering Netflix to its Xfinity subscribers regardless of whether it's in the form of an on-demand service or a billing partnership.

Discussion: Home Media Magazine, New York Times and Bits

Yinka Adegoke / MediaFile:
Could a Netflix-cable alliance spur HBO to go rogue?

Discussion: Mashable!, fiercecable.com/news/frontpage and paidContent

Lauren Goode / AllThingsD:

With Interest Lists, Facebook Wants to Be a Personalized Newspaper — First we had Twitter Lists. Then Facebook Friends lists. Then smart lists. And now, Facebook is introducing Interest lists as a way to push relevant content up in the increasingly cluttered news feed.

Discussion: Poynter, newsroom.fb.com, The Next Web and ReadWriteWeb

Nielsen Wire:

Buzz in the Blogosphere: Millions More Bloggers and Blog Readers — Blogs are sometimes overlooked as a significant source of online buzz in comparison to social networking sites, yet consumer interest in blogs keeps growing. By the end of 2011, NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company …

Discussion: WebProNews, Marketing Pilgrim, MediaPost, ZDNet, Podcasting News and BizReport

Michael Learmonth / AdAge:

TV Power NBC Universal Joins Web Video ‘Upfront’ — Owner of TV Networks to Display Digital Content Alongside YouTube, Yahoo and Hulu — The confederation of internet companies planning two weeks of “upfront” presentations for advertisers this spring are getting an unexpected new member: NBC Universal.

Discussion: Media & Entertainment, Thanks:@learmonth

Paul Sawers / The Next Web:

Amazon is creating a very large silo you can't escape from, say book industry chiefs — Internet giant Amazon is creating a ‘locked’ silo which users can't escape, according to a panel of publishing industry heads. — Amazon was apparently invited to join this particular panel discussion …

Discussion: TabTimes

Jeff Roberts / paidContent:
Apple Downplays Role Of ‘Kindle Threat’ In Alleged e-Book Conspiracy

Discussion: CNET, Gizmodo and GigaOM

Matt Rosoff / Business Insider:

Newspapers Are The Fastest Shrinking Industry In The U.S. — If you want to be a journalist, think online. — Newspapers have shed a greater percentage of jobs since 2007 than any other industry in the United States, according to data published today by LinkedIn.

Discussion: Poynter, The LinkedIn Blog, Jon Slattery and WebProNews

Bonnie Kavoussi / The Huffington Post:

Felix Salmon At Columbia Journalism School: Don't Blame Journalists For Failing To Prevent Financial Crisis — Some business reporters have a message for critics who say they did not try hard enough to expose banks' misdeeds before the financial crisis: Don't blame us.

Discussion: Talking Biz News

Anthony Ha / TechCrunch:

NewsiT Raises $500K To Gamify Crowd Journalism — Crowdsourced news platform NewsiT.net just announced that it has raised $500,000 in seed funding. And, timed to match the beginning of South by Southwest, it's also launching its iPhone app. — The company was founded …

Discussion: VatorNews

Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:

Turner launches an accelerator for media-focused startups — Like most big media companies, Turner Broadcasting might not exactly be known for its technology innovation. But it's looking to change that, with the launch of a new accelerator program called Media Camp, which hopes to seek …

Discussion: Nieman Journalism Lab

Robert Andrews / paidContent:

Germany Wants To Charge Search Engines To Use News Excerpts — Germany's government wants search engines and news aggregators to pay news publishers for using pieces of their material. — Its coalition committee has resolved that a collecting society should charge royalties to re-publishers of news material.

Verne Gay / Newsday:

Matt Lauer getting $25 million to stay on ‘Today,’ source says — Matt Lauer getting $25 million to stay on ‘Today,’ source says — I am reliably told that NBC and Matt Lauer are closing in on a deal that will pay him an estimated $25 million per year over the course of a multiyear deal …

Discussion: mediabistro.com, Hollywood Life, B&C, Mediaite, The Huffington Post and TVNewser

Andrew Phelps / Nieman Journalism Lab:

Reporters' Lab searches for ways to make reporting cheaper, without cheapening the reporting — Labs are all the rage in journalism these days. There's the Drone Journalism Lab, the Globe Lab, WaPo Labs, the New York Times R&D Lab, and more. — Duke University's newly launched Reporters' Lab …

Discussion: O'Reilly Radar