“ The logic is simple: an individual writer is always relatively niche. Niche means small audience. Small audience means you have to charge more per person to cover your costs.”

Except, with the Internet you don’t have physical/geographical constraints for distribution and suddenly a niche audience, at a global level, is not so niche. And it makes it a viable model, a thousand people paying $5/mo and all of a sudden you are making more than most journalists AND with much greater freedom of expression