I've been thinking for a while about this now, and I feel micropayments would probably have a huge impact around this. Maybe have a library app with most of the publications where you load some money in and for every article that you read halfway through (kinda like the Spotify model for incentivising artists) it automatically pays them from your end.
The main fallacy I see here is that you need to have money all the time in your account before you could read or you won't be able to read any articles. One way to mitigate this is that for every article you read you have the option of saving it later so you have something to read. The second one could be to show them ads.
P.S. I've been working around building an app for this for a while now.
This doesn't actually work. Micropayments from readers will never substitute for ad revenue, and convenience isn't the reason.
Even if you removed all friction from the system, and had the government mandate every citizen of the United States 18 years or older automatically has $12 per month taken from their pay (a typical content service subscription cost) and put in a microtransactions fund to distribute to the sites you read, you'd only be covering about 20% of what US advertisers currently spend. An 80% revenue cut would put most newspapers out of business: it certainly wouldn't let them remove their ads while operating as they currently do.
The reason micropayments will never add up is that advertisers have more to spend than consumers. They have more to spend because a portion of every purchase consumers make is funding that advertising. When you pay your car loan, buy groceries, fill your prescriptions, you're giving advertisers money to spend. And you're giving them a lot more per month than you have left over to fund your own microtransaction pool for the month.
Wow, I did not think from that perspective at all. Thank you for giving an in-depth overview too. I need to think of some way that works as a value add for the newspapers and provides a better reading experience for users.
This hits the nail on its head: Convenience in payments is such a great factor in making such models successful. People should be able to make these small and (individually) insignificant payments without having to jump through three factors of hoops.
P.S. I've been working around building an app for this for a while now.