The issue with paying for journalism is that quality journalism is spread out over many, many publishers on the web. I can't afford to pay for subscriptions to dozens of quality news sources. Until micro-payments or, more likely, a multi-publisher, subscription-based model is available, I would not be interested in moving to a payments based system.

Ironically, the most effective micro-payment or subscription-based system will probably come from Google or Facebook in the end.

I agree micro-payments are likely to be Google/Facebook/Apple driven. The EU has been pushing for a mandatory "link tax" that may help fund some news organizations. That'll force more media consolidation though.