To the average reader, the average story on the NYT is not nearly as valuable as the synopses written by those whose point of view the reader values. However, to the writers of those synposes and editorials, who drive the New York Times articles to the top of TechMeme and Hacker News, the articles are quite valuable, as they provide a launching point for their own writing. Perhaps there's a business model there.
Maybe, in the end that's still the same advertising based revenue that NYT is having problems with, except that the problem of making money off of ads is farmed off to the smaller blogs instead the paper itself. It may be that the smaller, more flexible blogs are able to hit on a balance that is able to fund both themselves and their news sources, but my suspicion is that if the ads aren't enough to support NYT on their own, they still won't be able to support it when they're spread out among a bunch of smaller blogs. If might work as an extra bit of revenue, but I don't see it becoming a main business.
