[jasode]

>You can't fund a month long investigative report based on micropayments,

But that type of expensive journalism also wasn't funded by subscriptions in the past. Woodword & Bernstein's long reporting on Watergate was funded by classified ads and advertising dollars from local businesses like car dealerships.

NYTimes was recently break-even and then somewhat profitable with digital subscriptions -- but they also had to reduce the headcount over the last 10 years to reduce costs. So far, no newspaper has successfully replaced all the previous ad dollars with digital subscription payments.