[majormajor]

The business model was dual revenue streams: subscription (or a la carte day-by-day or month-by-month) + ad revenue, with a few exceptions like broadcast TV (where the coverage tended to be more shallow and lowest-common-denominator compared to the early days of cable TV news).

The online advertising merchants realized they could "curate" and "summarize" the articles, resulting in far fewer ad impressions than if someone had to find things purely through the publication newspaper, and bring the ads forward to their portal instead of solely on the content itself.

AND they capitalized on an early reluctance to charge for things online to push the "ew, who wants to pay" mindset globally.