[mcgrath_sh]

I agree to a certain extent. I think there is an interesting gap between "independent blogger" and "traditional newspaper" that is starting to pop up in sports media and may be able to be successful in typical journalism. This site would be hyper-focused on a specific niche and would have paying customers to access content. Essentially, I think what we see in a traditional city-based newspaper will splinter into 3-5 related sites (one for a state or region that does general news and these types of investigations with smaller local arms for local news) that have paid access (either subscription or per-article pricing) of some sort. I do see some problems with that with non-sports information though.

As an aside, I'm not terribly familiar with bitcoin, but I often wondered if something like reddit's bitcoin bot was the solution to pay per article access. A system where you simply paste your wallet key into the article to unlock the rest of it for a nominal fee ($0.03-$0.08 per article) would seem to be a way to pay for things without a zillion accounts or transactions on your card. I say bitcoin, but, realistically, any universal pool of money that can be quickly withdrawn from without an account on a specific site would be neat. There have been times I wanted to read investigative articles from WSJ or other subscription sites, but I don't want to subscribe or have yet another login. If I could just paste in a code or click Apple Pay for that one article, I gladly would. The counter to that is I don't want every sub $0.50 transaction popping up on my credit card, which is why a universal pool of money like Bitcoin would be best.

I do think the idea of having time and a strong legal team behind you is important for this kind of story. Currently, the best way to access that is a traditional newspaper. Small operations definitely can't take on the legal risks for something like this, which is why an Atlantic model is difficult for hard journalism. I do wonder if independent places would start pooling resources for things like this.