Lots of work has been around which is the business model giving competitive advantage in the new online media game - a lot of factors, both traditional i.e. content, revenue and new i.e. timeliness (fastest is first), more channels to choose , from, increased global reach.

This will static though, as soon as a news provider gets comfortable and not open to new content in demand, channels popping up that didn’t exist before and other tech and environmental developments the edge gained is likely to be lost.

There are a lot of models and iterations though - as outlined here by Professor Michael Rappa

Business Models on the Web - Managing a Digital Enterprise