Jane Hamsher's comment at Talk Left:

The reason the New York Times is around to do "earned" media is because they make revenues off of "paid" media. Everyone understands that, it's just how business works in a capitalist system. And if you look at an advertising campaign for Toyota or Dove or Marlboro, they devote an increasing percentage of each campaign to online advertising. So it's not like we're asking anyone to participate in a system that has no benefit to them as advertisers.

The problem is that groups who send us their press releases expecting "earned media" just as they do the New York Times get the same "earned media" from us that they do from the New York Times. The difference is that they aren't factoring us into their "paid" media budgets, and like the New York Times, without that, we don't have a sustainable business model to keep offering "earned" media. As groups increasingly depend upon us as the only news outlets covering their issues (which we do without consideration as to whether they advertise with us or not), participating in a sustainable structure is something they need to be thinking about.

The reason that the NYT gets paid media is that they have a whole stable of sales representatives selling that media. Yes, it is true that traditional media campaigns think of traditional media first, and the NYT has the advantage of custom, habit, and inertia. But they don't depend upon that, they depend upon their display sales reps. I think at one time Chris Bowers was acting as the Liberal Blog Network's sales representative, but maybe I have that wrong. In any case, they need to band together and hire themselves a sales rep. If they want to attract anyone decent they need to offer a base salary of $20K/year plus a generous commission. That is still very low, but in this economy you could still get someone good.