It's "some want to publish/syndicate their content free forever". RSS was built by/for these people.
Micro-monetization is definitely a thing in need for a correct implementation at the protocol level, but don't put the blame on those that don't want it / manage to do without it.
But I think we will all be better off if we also had an RSS-like solution that does support monetization. It will be much better than having to rely on emails or big centralized companies.
set a subscription-based one with premium references; once paid/subscribed, you have an authenticated access (with a HTTP auth or token) to a specific feed.
Question is, is the monetization worth it at the syndication level only or also with/at the source? and if it gathers from many different sources, how does it manage access to distributed contents?
And how do you manage further syndication down the road? Is the value in the act of curating contents you syndicate, or in the contents themselves? Or wouldn't the two go hand in hand?