This is indeed a huge problem. In the current form, it quickly become unsustainable (in terms of both time and money) for customers to work with so many subscriptions. Maybe the end state is Netflix/Prime like platform for digital news wherein the platform can share the subscription revenue across all the participating media companies depending on the usage. The argument against that is - these platforms now control what is produced, their price and distribution. Such an arrangement will eventually subvert democracy.
Our team is working on creating a micro payments platform called ana.money.
We don't see this as micropayments vs subscriptions. But micropayments & subscriptions. Media outlets (text/audio/video) will benefit from offering both these forms of payments to let customers access their content.
Our goal is to build an infrastructure that supports this worldview. We will make it incredibly easy for publishers to sell both individual articles and subscriptions: taking care of user identity, invoicing, taxation, cross border/multi-currency, etc..