While all eyes are on the New York Times and its “frequent payer” experiment, several other funding developments are being overlooked.

CoverItLive fancies itself the Swiss Army Knife of live coverage. The service is a widget that is embeddable like a YouTube video allowing reporters to interact with readers through a curated chat, video streams, Twitter integration and even audio files (see the service’s video demo here).

Help a Reporter Out (HARO) founder Peter Shankman grew what was once a Facebook page into what he calls the largest source repository in the free world, with more than 150,000 global sources for journalists. He is also part of a collaborative effort to create a comprehensive media database on Twitter.

iStockphoto pays nearly $1.2 million in weekly contributor royalties and, according to PR director Kara Udzielaa, the company expects to see $200 million in revenue this year. With all this money riding on user-generated content (UGC), how does iStockphoto encourage submissions and engagement from its community of users?

Custom content should be a no-brainer business line for both publishers and advertising partners. For publishers, custom content is a viable revenue generator, one that provides potentially higher margins and more predictable returns than display advertising. For advertisers, custom media presents an opportunity to associate a brand with authentic, credible content about a topic, a trend, a market or an industry.

A year and a half ago, Pavan Nigam found himself overwhelmed with digital information, and after examining his own behavior patterns—always a smart move when working with the Web—he noticed a pattern of compulsively and repetitively checking websites looking for “what's new.”