Well, that's the problem, isn't it? Nat Geo stopped publishing in June and fired all its regular staff. Newspapers have been in consolidation and contraction for decades, with no sign of recovery.

The advantage of subs is that not everyone needs to pay

The disadvantage is that not enough will pay.

[–] t3rmit3@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Newspapers have been in consolidation and contraction for decades, with no sign of recovery.

If you are talking about printed newspapers, yes of course. If you are talking about Newspapers as in the organizations (NYT, Atlantic, etc), news consumption is actually way up, they have just been struggling to monetize effectively in the digital space, especially since the corporate-backed non-newspaper news media orgs like CNN and Fox don't have to rely on website ads or subs, and can create the expectation of free news content, which directly discourages casual news consumers from paying for it.

The disadvantage is that not enough will pay.

This depends entirely on the size and scope of what is being made. There are tons of news content creators who operate through subscriptions just fine. They're also not outputting print media which were always pre-printed based on demand estimates, never printed-to-order. If you think that there are no news sites funded off of subscriptions that are doing just fine, you are misinformed. They're just not the big names you think of, who have lost their mass-appeal due to having to compete with the aforementioned corporate-backed news media outlets who can afford to undercut them.

Anyone who is trying to ask for a subscription in order for people to read the same news they can get on CNN for free is going to fail hard. The key is reporting on stuff that CNN et al doesn't or won't.