That works for small papers like that - especially if there is no alternative. What about national or international media/news outlets. Paywalls simply drive p

That works for small papers like that - especially if there is no alternative. What about national or international media/news outlets. Paywalls simply drive people away because there are alternatives - which are free (and ad supported). If enough people are interested in it that you can make significant money with ads, you probably could also get people to pay for it directly The numbers dont work out though. Look at any big website's stats and they will almost certainly make more out of advertising than subscribers. I'm a lot more likely to pay $0.10 to read some interesting sounding thing than I am to commit to a much more costly paid subscription to your site. This gets said a lot. Firstly I dont believe it is actually true; it's easy enough to say but would you really do it. Often it is just rationalisation of current behaviour. Think again to all the content you read today on blogs/media outlets that run advertising. How many would you "buy" into at $.10? How much is that adding up to? Speaking personally I could be paying about $2-5 a day for content.... that's quite a lot.