— Lots of buzz about Emily Nussbaum’s cover story in the new issue of New York, about the new projects built by the journalist/programmer team at The New York Times. Original-Gawker Elizabeth Spiers is not impressed:

…are expectations for traditional media institutions so abysmally low that they should be roundly patted on the back for understanding the basics of web culture and implementing the corresponding applications?…when the Times invents the next Digg or YouTube — something that actually changes the way people consume and filter media, or at the very least the way in which media is produced — I’ll stomach 3,000 words about it. Until then, I don’t want to read an interminable piece about how web staffers at the NYT are actually doing their jobs, as if this were wildly unexpected.

I get her point, but the problem is that what the Times does in this area is really unusual for newspapers. I worry sometimes that we write too much about the NYT here, too, but it really feels like they’re some large-and-growing distance ahead of second-place in newspaper innovation online.

— When people talk about aggregator models for news, they always bring up Drudge, Huffington Post, and The Daily Beast. But I wonder why more attention doesn’t get paid to Daily Kos, which adds a strong editorial voice, an affection for activism, and a huge and involved community to the typical aggregation model. And Daily Kos seems to have more of a news-y feel than it used to — something I suspect will continue past Jan. 20. Their newish Congress Matters site is stuffed full of news. Founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga just announced 2008 revenues “easily broke $1 million” and allowed the site to have a paid staff of eight.