"The key issue is that people don't want to pay $2/month to twenty different writers. They want to pay $20/month to a single organization which has a hundred writers, also known as a "newspaper"."

That is not my experience at all. Buying a newspaper where you are only interested in 15 % of the content is like buying an entire CD with perhaps two really good songs. This model used to be the norm, but consumers hated it and it is becoming obsolete.