Absolutely right, but at the same time if you do pay, you have some (perhaps small) leverage over the content provider to try and ensure the advertising remains of a tolerable quality.
Even if I just had the option of outbidding the advertiser I'd be happy.
What I'd really like to see is a "real" news website that supplies non-biased news written by real investigative journalists with no advertisements. I'd pay handsomely for that.
+1, I'd definitely pay for that. Right now I don't trust news media by definition, and I believe only what I get from articles featured on HN - because I can be sure that when I click on "comments", I'll find it thoroughly analyzed and debunked by people who actually know and care about what they read. </rant>