The ad-driven model does count as free, and it's far less likely to deliver better quality news than a subscription service users pay for. The core metric for a

The ad-driven model does count as free, and it's far less likely to deliver better quality news than a subscription service users pay for. The core metric for ad-driven news sites is maximizing views—it doesn't matter how you get views as long as you get them. This means free sites are heavily incentivized to be the first to break a news story even if the details are wrong or sparse. Sure, they'll issue corrections and updates later, but only a small percentage of the initial viewers will ever see these, and there's essentially zero cost for having made the mistake. The core metric for subscription news sites is minimizing churn. A mistake will cost a subscription site subscribers who have a massive lifetime value. These sites are heavily incentivized to report high quality, accurate news even if they're not the first to break the story.