If they intend for a mass market to read their articles, indie publications should find a way to sell a user an article for a fair price. Especially in the context of coming from a news aggregator site, it's absurd that I'm going to buy a recurring subscription for Tax Software Quarterly, Yacht Week, Greg's TV Reviews etc. The number of distinct domains I click through to from HN alone would be hundreds of dollars a month if I'm starting subscriptions for each one.

I hate and block ads, since they literally screw up the functioning of the page now, so I don't think they should "just have ads and be open" -- but I think expecting average non-journalists to sign up for subscriptions to multiple "national newspapers" and a half dozen news magazines is absurd, which is why people here don't like paywalls, and bypass them wherever possible.