Sure maybe a handfull of papers like the NYT or WAPO could pull it off because they are designed to be a one stop shop. But once you are into the second tier, what am I supposed to subscribe to 100 different newspapers so I can occasionally read an article from them. At least the LA Times is kind of big. I've seen much more egregious examples than that, for example the Mercury in SF.
Unfortunately in 2002 it was the second largest, at just under a million subscribers, and is now down to 600K in 2019, and is $50 million in the red.
So whatever its former glories may have been, that does not mean its business model is working -- it's clearly not working, and its digital strategy has been one of the worst sources of dissapointment with only 250K digital subscribers in 2020[1]. So when someone criticizes the business model by pointing out that it's unlikely that people will pay for a digital subscription to the LA Times, and this is reflected in fantastically, embarassingly, shockingly[2] low digital subscription rates compared to what you believe the LA Times peers to be, then that suggests that either the LA times is not in the same peer group, or its digital offerings are uniquely unappealing, or both. In either case, throwing up a paywall doesn't seem to be working.
[1] https://www.pressgazette.co.uk/news-publishers-surpassed-100...
[2] See this hacker news thread about how dissapointing their digital numbers were: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20576544
I'm probably not going to subscribe to more than one general paper, because they probably have 90% overlap in coverage meaning even the second subscription is drastically less valuable than the first. There is no way I'm making it to 5.
Realistically I can get 85% percent of that news without subscribing to any meaning even one subscription is a stretch and there is no way I'm doing more than that. In the event that there is one article every three months that is LAT specific that I just cannot go without reading, I'll find some way to breach the paywall in that instance.
For the record, I'm not claiming NYT or WAPO are better papers than the times. In fact I hate the NYT and have more or less no opinion of the LAT.
Whichever one catches your fancy? We don’t all need to subscribe to every newspaper. Does everyone buy each brand of shaving cream?
On second thought, we can in fact do both simultaneously by shifting the responsibility for supporting good journalism onto our favorite other, such as "the government", "the rich", "regulators", "we as a society", etc.
I am personally completely satisfied paying for publications as long as I read at least one article per issue. In fact, due to time constraints, one article per issue has become something of an objective.
I'm also skeptical that this is a sustainable business model although I hope I am wrong.