Edit: while I could remove this comment in &#x27;shame&#x27; over posting it before reading the article (written by the cofounder of, uh, The Correspondent), I&#x27;ll just leave it up...<p>I agree that low-quality journalism will have difficulty applying the subscription model, but personally I won&#x27;t mourn their disappearance. I stopped actively reading most main-stream newspapers a long time ago.<p>The Correspondent, on the other hand, a Dutch online newspaper, is doing pretty well with subscriptions. Their approach (and tagline&#x2F;motto) is to go &#x27;beyond the whims&#x2F;delusion of the day&#x27; by only publishing a few good articles a day, instead of the deluge of articles, often rewritten Reuters&#x2F;AP items giving you piecemeal, context-less updates on different issues.<p>Their approach is about having a number of correspondents, each in charge of a theme that the staff considers important, or that the readers have suggested (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;decorrespondent.nl&#x2F;correspondenten" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;decorrespondent.nl&#x2F;correspondenten</a> for a list, google translate should give you an impression of the various themes). Quite often pieces by guest writers are published too, but usually still under one of these themes.<p>Quite often they&#x27;ll publish a series of articles, diving into one topic, or write an article as a response to reader feedback (one example being the Operation Easy Chair, which they also published in English and as an eBook: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10789987" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10789987</a>).<p>So far they seem to be doing pretty well, which is amazing considering that it&#x27;s (almost) entirely in Dutch, and entirely reader-supported. I think they&#x27;re working on an English version as well.<p>One could argue that it only works because their audience mostly consists of educated readers with a decent income, but I&#x27;d argue that &#x27;non-educated&#x27; readers would often be better of with little to no news instead of the crap they&#x27;re presented with through the low-quality papers. And if demand for such news is large enough, people will end up willing to pay for it when it&#x27;s gone. Finally, there&#x27;s acceptable news coverage provided on public broadcast as well.<p>This will suck for many journalists, but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if the decent ones will be happy with whatever alternatives pop up. Most decent journalists I know are miserable at the papers they work for, for various reasons. The Wire&#x27;s last season, while perhaps a bit too slanted against mainstream newspapers, does a pretty decent job outlining many of the problems.