The newsonomics of David Pogue and the Pujols Effect » Nieman Journalism Lab.

Reading Ken Doctor on the power of the writer as a brand:

So how much, financially, is a David Pogue or a Nate Silver worth The New York Times?

The value equation has two parts. First, media can count the direct revenue driven by a contributor’s posts, columns, videos, or event appearances. Then there’s the elusive — but very real — brand-building. Personalities do help build brands.

The bigger the brand, though, the more value the brand may confer on the personality, as compared to the reverse. As we try to disentangle the value of Andrew Sullivan’s pay model from the value of his previous employers, we see that he’s both proving out a new model and showing us the limits of it. Both the Beast and The Atlantic, his previous home, conferred a fair amount of brand authority on him.

Ken is such an incisive writer, always enjoy his thoughts–and these comments are spot on for where media is heading–so disaggregated,