Pay-per-item is a wonderful business model! It works spectacularly for movies and books and similar.

However, one possible wrinkle springs to mind. That is, all the sectors what per-item media payment works well for are long-form. There's an active review and feedback ecosystem around them, allowing consumers to judge quality before paying. This performs the critical function of enabling consumers to de-risk their purchases.

Once again, I'm completely sure this is just a personal failing, but I'm struggling to find a way to construct such a system around newspapers. Reviews only work well when the desire form immediate access is low and the time-cost of the review is a small percentage of that of the content being commented upon. Newspaper articles would seem to fail both tests!

Please, help me with my failure of imagination and comprehension.