Well .. isn't that the same as TV has been for decades as the dominate media source? I don't think many people signed up for cable to watch TV news they were getting with their antenna for free/with ads. Cable just bundled news with it, so this business model where you either pay for no ads or get free content with ads has been around a long time now.. since radio and TV broadcasting came out. In that case the nature of the broadcasts made subscriptions too hard to pull off because all you needed is a receiver, but still the business model seems to have worked just fine for a long time. It might not produce the most integrity, but subscription only news means the majority of your citizens never sign up and get no news.. which in theory should be bad, but given the state of polarization might oddly work out better.