Paul GrahamVerified account

There is room in the market for a pay per article (a la Brave's BAT) model. Why is this not a thing?

Because reporting is expensive and news sites need steady revenue.

They would gain money from such a model, I'm guessing. But that no one is doing it suggests me I'm missing something

Why do you think they'd gain, rather than lose? My intuition tells me the opposite (consider that SaaS companies charge recurring monthly fees and not "pay per interaction with the app" or whatever).

Because many people who are subscription averse would pay. Also, with SaaS apps you use the whole thing. With media, you pick in a much more narrow way. I only read Tyler from that Bloomberg site

"Because many people who are subscription averse would pay." lol yes but would this be enough to outweigh the loss from gettin reliable higher $$ recurring revenue from a smaller base is the actual question

Exactly. If I were building a news business, I'd rather rely on payments from people who love my product (subscribers) rather than smaller payments from people who only kind of like my product and aren't willing to pay a lot.

One problem with that is that this tends to drive biased coverage, because what people really love is to hear their prejudices confirmed. I think this is why the NYT has shifted from a neutral(ish) "newspaper of record" to something way further to the left in just a few years.