I like your suggestion with easily payable small amounts. Because the way payment currently works is just not scale-able on an individual level. Sure, $20 per month for a technical news site would be worth it … if that was the only news site you are consuming. But it isn’t. I consume multiple tech news, local news, etc. I can’t get back my full worth of spent money per site, because my time is split between multiple sites; and my time is finite.

I also can’t just say “well, this month I consume only site A, next only site B, etc.”, because that defeats how “news” work. In the end I skim headlines (or even sometimes content) and THEN it shows what is actually of interest and where I stay longer/dig deeper/actually read full.

In a perfect world we probably could have a “tip jar” at the end of every article that people throw in digital cash when the article was worth it. Unfortunately too many people would abuse it and simply not pay at all, so authors will have to ask for payment upfront … but then I pay for something which I don’t even know will be good. Maybe after seeing the full article (not yet reading it in detail) I realize it’s not the kind of content I hoped for.

That thing was indeed easier with print media. You go to the store, flick through the magazine/paper and if you like it you pay for it and go read it.