A summary of the thread, from my perspective: 1. Advertising is the wrong way to monetize, paywalls are the right way, 2. Paywalls don't work because they make people go elsewhere and sites still have expenses, 3. (you) Paywalls do work, NYT and WSJ make lots of money on digital, 4. (me) Yes but that's only because they are the winners in a winners-take-all market.

I don't really disagree with you, my point was just that the fact that paywalls can work for an extremely small set of publishers does not resolve the tension in comments #1 and #2.