Such a model could even have a cap: It's $0.001/article up to $20/month. Like... cell phone data use? But without having to sign contracts or pre-payment.

If only a few of the paywall newspapers would implement a direct per article fee, even at $0.10-0.50 I would pay for many articles because I'm too lazy and don't want to pull up a javascript disabled google cache version of the page or fire up a VM... or any of the other techniques SWIM would use to get around paywalls.