That's not a bad idea, but it'd mean you'd need to subscribe to HN, Reddit, etc., because WSJ and other paywall publishers are going to want to get their money

That's not a bad idea, but it'd mean you'd need to subscribe to HN, Reddit, etc., because WSJ and other paywall publishers are going to want to get their money from somewhere. But I guess it's possible that sites like HN could institute an optional subscription system where you can pay a monthly subscription fee and then that's used to subscribe to these news sites through a special deal for linked articles.