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Matt Lauer Extends Today Contract to 2011 (NYT)
Lauer and NBC have agreed to add three more years to his contract, which was to expire in 2008. He will be paid more than $13 million a year, according to a source.

Payola Scandal Shining Light on Ethics Questions at NYP (WWD)
Whatever guidelines the paper may have, they don't seem to apply to gossip writers. "Most people at the paper were guided by their own moral compass," said a source. "I think Page Six has its own rules, and people outside Page Six don't know what they are." NYDN: FBI agents still gathering evidence on Stern scandal. FBNY: The Page Six scandal big in Canada. CJR Daily: The NYT has run no less than 10 stories about the scandal since Friday. USAT: The scandal has cast a harsh new light on the celebrity-journalism world, where freebies, junkets and quid pro quos are often standard operating procedure.

Howard's Lost Herd (LAT)
Howard Stern once commanded a national audience of 12 million daily listeners before jumping to satellite in January. But since then, his kingdom has shrunk to a small fraction of that size.

Disney to Offer ABC TV Shows Online, With Ads (NYT)
The Walt Disney Company plans to make some television shows available free online as a way to bolster revenue by selling two sets of advertising for a single show.

FCC Chair Martin Prying Open the Cable Market (AP)
Since he took over at the Federal Communications Commission last March, Kevin Martin has notched a string of victories while navigating treacherous political waters. Now Martin has waded into another controversial issue: new competition in the cable TV market.

Is NYT's Kakutani a Bad Critic? (Slate)
Ben Yagoda: Michiko Kakutani is a profoundly uninteresting critic. Her main weakness is her evaluation fixation. This may seem an odd complaint, but, in fact, whether a work is good or bad is just one of the many things to be said, and usually far from the most important or compelling.

Online Ads Grab Bigger Share of the Pie (NYP)
Spending on Internet ads will overtake billboards and other outdoor advertising next year, and close the gap on radio in 2008. The Internet will account for 6.5 percent of all advertising by the year after next, up from an earlier forecast.

College Journalism That Dare Not Speak Its Name (Inside Higher Ed)
North Central University has removed a husband and wife from their editorial posts at a student newspaper after they refused to allow administrators to vet the paper before publication. The two took heat for covering gay issues and challenging the Christian doctrine on speaking with tongues.

Tech Startup Offering Blog Syndication Service (BusinessWeek)
As recently as a year ago, it was inconceivable that much of Old Media would embrace blogs. But with new blogs appearing daily and more people reading blogs, the mainstreaming of the blogosphere is well under way. And newspapers are realizing that to remain relevant, they need to get more bloggy. EditorsWeblog: As newspapers become content aggregators, brand names matter less and less.

NYO a 'Niche Paper for Real New Yorkers' (PR Week)
Choire Sicha rose to prominence as editor of Gawker.com, but he has always loved newspapers. Now, as senior editor at the New York Observer, he's able to cover the Big Apple for the quirky entity he considers to be the city's hometown paper.

NYT Shopper-in-Chief Kuczynski Drops $5K on a Coat and Lives to Write About It (TNR)
In 2000, Alex Kuczynski showed disdain for the shopping-happy Lucky, and for the American culture of buying in general. Today she pens a weekly column about the art and sport of shopping for a section of the paper that could be characterized as a smarter, higher-end variation on Lucky.

New Publisher at Newsweek International (Guardian)
Rhona Murphy, who joined the Washington Post-owned weekly news magazine in 2002 as associate publisher and director of international sales, was promoted after closing the gap in advertising revenue with the magazine's rivals, including Time.