It's sad that anyone thinks the advertising model will go away. Amazon has proved that people will pay subscription fees AND get served ads.

I wouldn't mind quite so much if the advertising was at least interesting and creative. Most of it is just the same regurgitated crapola.

Journalism and nonprofit journalism are all struggling massively and anyone prospering right now is likely at the largesse of a filthy rich donor like Bezos. ProPublica runs no ads, they have a donate button, but there's no way it's sufficient to cover the amount of work they do which is substantial. I'm not sure who their benefactor(s) are but they definitely have an angel. NPR and affiliates are all laying off left and right. The Intercept is on death's door. Even on the obscenely commercial side, The Messenger burned through $70M in like 9 months and couldn't survive. Old stalwarts like Newsweek are now spammy content farms.

NY Times has done an incredible job becoming a total lifestyle brand selling news, cooking, games, etc. It's a very, very difficult model to copy. Axios and Politico sell high-priced "enterprise" subscriptions to deep-pocketed niche groups. It's tumultuous to say the least.