The problem I have with news sites is that in-general, news sites are extremely hard to cancel subscriptions to. Even piracy sites that offer "donation benefits" are usually non-recurring or easily-cancelled. Even though I can easily afford to pay for the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, in-practice, I refuse because I know that cancellation is going to be an extremely arduous activity that isn't going to be fun, if I don't like it. Heck, I've seen pirate or sketchy sites (e.g., private forums, book clubs, file hosts) in entirely different languages (e.g., Chinese) that are easier to cancel than old-world journalism.
I've tried to support "traditional journalism gone digital" too! I paid for a subscription to Ars Technica once, but the website kept logging me out, so I needed an ad-blocker anyways. They also said they would send me a free WIRED subscription, but they sent me Sports Illustrated for a year. I tried to subscribe to The Atlantic, and after I paid, I learned I somehow signed up for a digital version that still included ads, because ad-free was a subscription offer that was limited and had to be specifically clicked on (the general site subscription wasn't the same as the ad-free one).
I want to support journalism! I give out $100ish a-month in pixiv fanbox subscriptions and patreon subscriptions. But I'm not going to give any payment information to sketchy sites that just make it impossible to cancel and have terrible experiences. It's not worth paying for the hassle of that.
News publications also still think they're competing with each other. Like, it seems like each newspaper assumes you're going to subscribe to them and then go there every morning like it's the 1990's and get 100% of your news from them, and charge accordingly.
If I'm going to pay for news it's going to have to be an all-you-can-eat deal like the music streaming services. I'll pay if it means that like 70% of the news links I click from Google News, social media or reddit are covered.
And Twitter also has Twitter Blue, where they've done a deal with a bunch of sites so that if you click a link while on Twitter (and are subbed to Twitter Blue) you will have an ad-free experience while browsing the external site.
Yeah Apple News is a good step forward, but it's region-locked and not available where I live. I didn't know what about Twitter Blue, but the fact that you have to go through Twitter seems rather limiting.
At least it seems like some people have identified the market, hopefully it develops from here.
I've tried to support "traditional journalism gone digital" too! I paid for a subscription to Ars Technica once, but the website kept logging me out, so I needed an ad-blocker anyways. They also said they would send me a free WIRED subscription, but they sent me Sports Illustrated for a year. I tried to subscribe to The Atlantic, and after I paid, I learned I somehow signed up for a digital version that still included ads, because ad-free was a subscription offer that was limited and had to be specifically clicked on (the general site subscription wasn't the same as the ad-free one).
I want to support journalism! I give out $100ish a-month in pixiv fanbox subscriptions and patreon subscriptions. But I'm not going to give any payment information to sketchy sites that just make it impossible to cancel and have terrible experiences. It's not worth paying for the hassle of that.