This presumes that 'keep it free' is actually desirable. Free journalism means the person reading it is the product. Perhaps the less of that, the better.
the existing model has been to subsidize newspaper sales with advertising for a very long time. This same model carried forward through radio and television.
The alternative is a pay-per-view service, or subscribing to wires. I haven't done any research into the viability of that type of service, but it is a paradigm shift.
