There are many ways to make money, one obvious one would be a subscription. Of course, that makes the service less viral since payment would be an obstacle, so in practice the services that win in the marketplace won't use that (at least not at first).

Another would be government funding. Many countries still do this for national broadcasters and to compensate music artists (a tax on owning TVs and a tax on recorded media). That option carries its own obvious problems, but it is an option. It's just not the option that would give IPO in the sky stock return opportunities.

I agree that it's not the ads themselves that are killing media. The problem is how ad revenue forces Facebook and newspapers to heavily optimize for time spent on site, and the end result is the "filter bubble" where you get more content you like, and less content you don't like.