Yeah people hate ads, and are tired of having a monthly subscription to everything. The aggregators where you pay per article never seem to catch on. I really don’t know what the solution is for people who like to read several different news sources. Back in the day the paper worked since you only subscribed to that one news paper, but no one can afford to subscribe to cnn, Bloomberg, nat geo, CNBC, etc…
As I recall, back in the day (90s) my family subscribed to a regional daily paper, a local weekly paper, National Geographic, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Reader's Digest, Smithsonian magazine, various kids magazines depending on age (e.g. Highlights, Boys Life, etc), MIT Technology Review, and a few industry-specific publications.
In addition to that, we'd frequently stop by a newsstand or bookstore to pick up other periodicals if there was an article we were interested in, or if we had extra time to read that week.
The idea of halcyon days when all you needed was a single subscription is a myth. If you wanted regional news plus some pool reports from Washington, Wall Street, and somewhere in Europe, then sure, a single subscription would do. But if you liked to read several different news sources, you paid for several different news sources.
Will corroborate; family was subscribed to many newspapers and magazines when I was a kid. NatGeo included.
They all slowly got culled, though. Why? Because the content kept getting worse, and when it came time to deliberately renew one it simply wasn't worth the effort nor the money.
People don't pay for journalism because journalism went to shit.
