Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm fairly certain this has all been tried. The New York Times and many other news outlets do have a freemium model of sorts. You are allowed access to 10 news articles a month, and after you reach your limit you can pay for more. Guess how many people subscribe to the Times and are willing to actually pay to read another article? If we're talking online news content, there's just a ton of different outlets and I don…
Ok, I just went and had a look at the Times website you minimum subscription is around $80USD a year but you can up to around 500USD a year. Lets round 800,000 at 100US a year is 80MM right? Thats a shit tone of journalists employed if you ask me.
If you actually read the article, it says that the NY Times' operating costs were $1.48 Billion last year. $80 Million would cover a very minor portion of that.