* not culturally integrated the way we don't mind paying for smartphone apps;
* not atomic enough (we want to pay cents for an article, not dollars for a website, nor tens of dollars for a long-term subscription);
* it raises convenience and trust issues;
* it competes against ad-based models, which adblockers have failed to bankrupt until now;
* paywall sites aren't taken into account properly by Google et al.
Relieving pressure from the currently broken paywall model won't help fix it. Making the situation untenable is the only way to make it change. The most effective move would be to kill ads as a business model. Of course, don't expect Google, an advertising agency, to help us do that. And how to pay author while keeping Internet searchable remains an open problem AFAIK.
we want to pay cents for an article, not dollars for a website, nor tens of dollars for a long-term subscription
Is that true, though? I think Spotify has proved that people prefer subscriptions to one-off payments for music, for example. Having to make a purchase/don't purchase decision for every news article you read doesn't seem like a good experience at all.
I just checked out WSJ and NY Times. After promo, WSJ is $29/month. That's whether or not you want actual paper or just digital access. NY Times has various plans, one of the cheapest is about $16/month. So that's just two newspapers.
I'd gladly pay $20 or even $30 per month for full access to all the major newspapers. But the big papers would never agree to that, because their individual cuts of the pie would probably be too small.
* not culturally integrated the way we don't mind paying for smartphone apps;
* not atomic enough (we want to pay cents for an article, not dollars for a website, nor tens of dollars for a long-term subscription);
* it raises convenience and trust issues;
* it competes against ad-based models, which adblockers have failed to bankrupt until now;
* paywall sites aren't taken into account properly by Google et al.
Relieving pressure from the currently broken paywall model won't help fix it. Making the situation untenable is the only way to make it change. The most effective move would be to kill ads as a business model. Of course, don't expect Google, an advertising agency, to help us do that. And how to pay author while keeping Internet searchable remains an open problem AFAIK.