I pay for the digital NYT for one specific section of it and if I could just pay for that part I would, but there's not an option to do that and the rate for th

I pay for the digital NYT for one specific section of it and if I could just pay for that part I would, but there's not an option to do that and the rate for the whole NYT subscription is cheap anyway. I browse the rest of the NYT maybe a few times a week, but I largely just read the one section I like multiple times a day. There's just a lot of competition amongst these big digital media organizations, most of which have many employees. And the article's author is right that they've been largely supported by VC money. I think there is still room for good digital content that you can charge for (e.g. Stratechery), but creators will need to focus on a niche that customers find compelling enough to want to pay for (and I don't think finding one is that hard). (I'd also immediately pay for Matt Levine's Money Stuff column if he ever went independent.) But most should be done with very small operations and staffs. The great thing about it is that digital content has such favorable marginal cost dynamics.