I don't think you are right, because nobody has succeeded at the scope you have suggested - never mind local papers, even prestigious publications like TIME are having a very tough time, which I doubt is a "branding/marketing" issue. You are vastly overestimating the "will to pay" for journalism. It's much more likely that local news desks will disappear in favor for a central and smaller product.

Bezos is pushing that model at a larger scale in the Washington Post. We'll have to see how well that works.

I pay for Washington Post and NYT. Honestly, I couldn't live without them. Not for your typical daily news, but for the truly interesting stories.

It's good stuff. I could spend hours.

Before the rise of the Internet, traditional media like magazines and newspapers got the majority of their revenue from advertising. It's nice when people pay money to subscribe but it wasn't enough then. It's probably not enough now.

Before the internet, we still had to pay for newspaper subscriptions, and their revenues were supplemented by advertising.

The advertising will continue. The subscriptions are only meant to define the audience demographics. Lots of print media companies actually limit their audiences to only marketable demographics, especially magazines. Magazines often say they're oversubscribed if they don't hit certain demographic profiles, so their advertisers aren't being wasted. For example, if a bunch of poor college males were subscribing to Vogue, it doesn't help their advertisers. And those subscriptions costs a ton of money in mailings, so they tighten their audience to be core advertiser friendly.

Currently, an NY Times full digital subscription is $300/year; full + home (or just home, as far as I know) is nearer $500. Washington Post daily + digital is $90.