I feel like I keep repeating myself, but IMO the real problem here is a lack of a viable micro-transaction infrastructure. Donations work for small outfits, but not for the kind of organization that can afford to put a journalist on a story for months on end. The last viable model was that each household would subscribe to one or two newspapers, and that's mostly what they read. Now, I need to be able to subscribe to 10-20 publications at the same total cost, and that list of subscriptions must adapt to my changing reading habits. The differences between paying for content and consumption of content are too large, and current efforts to subsidize the gap with ads are falling short. Until we can change the funding model, the solution will be to make cheaper news.