Attributor, a start-up that offers ad revenue sharing services to newspapers and blogs, "wants to bring the ad networks into the mix, to allow them to be the revenue distributor that looks not only at the site that offered up the news story but also the news outlet that created the story," ZDNet Senior Editor Sam Diaz commented in his blog.

Diaz applauds the start-up's business model, saying the proactive approach to generating revenue from news aggregation is sorely lacking amongst newspaper executives who, according to Diaz, "knew only one way to respond: cry foul" when they saw their old business models being challenged.
Ultimately, Diaz writes that Attributor offers as "a smart idea that could be part of the overall transformation" of the new business models for newspapers, which must find a way to turn a profit from their aggregated content.

The New York Times referred to Attributor as "more carrot than stick." Although the start-up's plan faces legal obstacles, it has received the attention of The New York Times Co., the Washington Post Co., Hearst, MediaNews Group, Reuters, McClatchy and Conde Nast.