I've seen and read about papers that survived on ads, and papers financed by causes. Never seen any successful paper on any other format.
Yes, the Internet makes new things possible, but how can you be that sure?
When in history did newspapers ever survive on subscriptions?
Sources : http://www.businessinsider.com/why-the-economist-is-winning-...
or if you prefer to delve into The Economist Group annual report you can find the 2014 edition here:
http://www.economistgroup.com/pdfs/Annual_report_2014_FINAL....
Granted, the publication is pretty much an exception in print journalism land, but it does prove that not all is lost.
We agree that ads are dead. That logically leaves us with causes.
The problem with causes are that they are inherently biased. However, there are usually sources for each side. Maybe we should embrace the bias? Instead of looking for objectivity and an ideal of journalism, we could try to balance biases.
Google started with Page Rank, which tries to calculate authority (and thus implicitly objectivity) into a single number. Maybe AI technology can identify all relevant causes for each topic, balance bias, and present a wealth of opinions and the facts they agree on? Sure, the "balance bias" step is the problematic one, because here a gatekeepers occurs.
As a result, the Roosevelt Administration countered with a series of public service films informing the public of subversive private propaganda and demonstrating ways to detect hidden or covert biases.
At first I laughed when I heard about this. I couldn't imagine anyone putting that much effort into analyzing news. But using AI? You might be on to something...
I'm talking about the clickbait, tabloid-quality reporting, sponsored content, etc. Aka the stuff directly embedded as an "article" on the site