The problem is what to pay for and how. The WSJ may aggressively wish I were a paying subscriber, but I only read a handful of their articles, so that's never going to happen. I get news from all over the Internet, often because it gets posted here. Microtransactions might work, but have never taken off.

I would happily pay for an all-you-can-eat, ad-free subscription model, just as I'm happy to pay for Spotify. But it has to cover all the content I actually read, which in effect means hundreds of tiny specialist blogs and major publications like WSJ.

Unfortunately such a subscription model doesn't exist. And very few businesses are in a position to create it. Perhaps Google could, by offering a no-ads subscription across their adwords networ. They are unlikely to ever offer this though, because it would cannabalise their existing, highly profitable ad business. Hardly anyone else would have the necessary traction to make it work.