The hardship for publishers won't end until two things happen, in my opinion: 1) they are willing to charge a reasonable price per article (no $300/year subscription) and 2) they are able to charge per article, in a cost-effective manner (i.e. "micropayments").
Why doesn't this exist yet? It seems so obvious, so many people get news from Facebook, twitter, Reddit, (and to a lesser extent HN) on an article by article basis. But all news sites delude themselves into thinking they can make these people loyal customers of their content, to the tune of paying $10-30 per month. I would happily pay $0.50 or something per article (maybe price adjusted by word count, within reason) to be able to get news from a wide variety of sources and engage with comments on the social/aggregator sites.
Is it just too big of a chicken and egg problem to coordinate a single broker for this across many sites? Unfortunately a broker is needed because I don't think there exists an external payment method with fees reasonable enough to make a lot of sub-1$ payments. That used to be touted as a use for Btc a few years ago but now btc fees are higher than credit card fees at something like $1-$3.
