I completely agree. Here in France, there are few truly independent newspapers, all the big ones like Le Monde, Liberation, Le Figaro are owned by billionaires

I completely agree. Here in France, there are few truly independent newspapers, all the big ones like Le Monde, Liberation, Le Figaro are owned by billionaires like Niel, Drahi or Dassault. It's quite dangerous as it breaks the independence of these newspaper (for example Niel declared in 2011: "When journalists are bothering me, I buy a share of their fucking newspaper, and they leave me alone"). It's quite dangerous. The quality of these newspaper also tends to go to "click-baity" contents and it's really annoying. A few years ago, I interviewed for a position at Le Monde (as a sysadmin, not as a journalist), and from what I understood, there was rampant tensions in the redaction between those coming from the web publication and those coming from the "paper" one (the two were historically separated), no wonders... They still reveal major scandals from time to time (ex: Le Monde and the Panama Papers), but it is rarer than it used to. Fortunately there are a few independent newspapers, the 2 main ones in France being "Le canard enchaine", which is still "full paper", no website (it's a weekly however), and the other one being Mediapart, which is an online only, ads free, subscription based newspaper. I subscribed to Mediapart a few years ago. It was at the time a complete emotional reaction after Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris. But more than 2 years later, I still subscribe to it, and keep reading it daily. One of the big dimension of why I keep paying for it (it's around ~10 euros/month) is that it's a way to support a free and independent press (the other being simply to stay informed). There is clearly room for an independent and quality press. It doesn't take that much subscriptions to maintain a decently sized newspaper, 100 000 subscribers at 10e/m gives you enough revenue to sustain around 100 employees. The press is a powerful counter balance of the political. It should remain that way. It will if a somewhat large number of individuals agree to pay for it.