I read longform articles and journalism voraciously. When I'm not pulling overtime at work, I usually read 20-50 in-depth articles a day. But the challenge is how widely I read. Sure, there's a bunch at NYT (which I subscribe to), and a bunch at open-access blogs and journals around the net, but the middle are tough.
I might normally want to read, over the course of a month, 10-15 articles from each of 15 different paywalled magazines or newspapers. Which is more than the 2-5 free articles typically allowed past their paywalls, but little enough (especially compared to 15 or more competitors) to justify $15-25+ a month per source. Maybe if I was a Wall Street trader the WSJ and Bloomberg are no-brainer expenses, but right now I wouldn't get enough value from them to justify their sky-high subscription costs, but I would like to read a decent handful of articles a month. A few publishers, like NYT or WP, have picked up on this market, and regularly discount to capture various price points, but lots have held onto a 'big subscription or none' model.
What I really want is an (expensive) subscription to something like Spotify Premium across publishers. I'd happily fund the pool to the tune of $50-100 a month, if it could get me access to my top 15-25 paywalls. Everyone gets some, some get close to standard subscription rates, but it'd just enable me not to have to worry about whether I've used up my free articles for the month at each origin. And it'd also let me contribute to lots of magazines and things I do appreciate, just not $25/mo appreciation.