I'm a bit late to the controversy about top science mag and science online presence Seed essentially selling blogging space to PepsiCo. (Fortunately, that offer has been withdrawn.)
That said, it leads me to two observations.
One, given that Seed does appear to be hurting financially, is about ... a bete noire of mine ... online paywalls.
And, it led me to think of two quasi bete noires of new media punditry, Jay Rosen and Clay Shirky.
Both of them, for all their commentary on the future of media, have failed to fully address the financial issues from all sides, IMO. That's why, though paywalls aren't perfect, it's an issue I hammer and hammer. Google has driven online ad prices lower and lower. HuffPost and elsewhere has shown, more than once, the conflict-of-interest issues that can arise with "donor media" on the nonprofit side. So, that means other financial models have to be investigated. (And, in dismissing paywalls, Rosen/Shirky have only attacked monolithic paywalls or micropayments; to the best of my knowledge, neither has really discussed the "metered flexwall" that a place like The Economist has.)
The second is that, Examiner, Suite101, etc. are showing how to ruin this model even further with SEO-targeted "writing." Not only does it lower the quality of writing, it sends more writing chasing after Google-lowered ad dollars.
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