Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is one of a handful of services that lets journalists ask questions to a large number of people quickly in the hopes of adding valuable perspective to the news.

Public relations veteran Peter Shankman launched HARO early last year as a Facebook group for connecting sources with reporters, as he had already been doing manually. It has since grown into a serious business with almost no overhead, averaging over $1 million in yearly revenue as massive, general-interest social networks like Facebook and Twitter delay or struggle to find profitability.

The real value, at least in the short term, says Nisenholtz, is is the feedback the NYT and others will get on user behavior. Running down the risks and the opportunities, he said, “It’s a much better branding opportunity for us, a much better picture of our look and feel. The downside is the consumer might stay on the page at Google and not click through.”

Krishna Bharat, the engineer who created Google News, describes it on the Google News blog as “a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles” by making it fast and easy to look at media-rich pages without the load time. It also combines technologies: aggregation, search, personalization both formal and automated as a user spends time with the service. It is both a potential blessing—especially if it gains enough users to create a revenue stream instead of a trickle—and a potential curse that gives people access to the content without needing the originating site.