You don't anybody who consumes from three pay walled platforms or they don't pay for it and instead use archive.ph or similar ?
I would think my family having access to read good quality journals rather than get their news and analysis just from social media or click bait content farms is worth $50 / month ?
I know only 2 top quality newspapers not behind a paywall : Aljazeera and The Guardian, both while have decent American coverage or not amercian. Perhaps you can also include NPR, BBC and few other high quality news sources that are still free but are not newspapers.
Every high quality news source even news agencies like Reuters[1] are now behind paywalls.
[1] Associated Press is still free, given their non-profit status hopefully will remain so.
I remember something about Aljazeera around ten years ago where Aljazeera America (AJAM) was remove from cable TV networks in the US. Something to do with their affiliation with middle eastern countries I think. I’m not sure that’s enough reason to dismiss them completely.
Anyway, what you say makes sense, but I just don’t think many people drop $50/month on that stuff. They don’t see the value, and continue to feed Facebook.
Al Jazeera is Qatar government funded akin to BBC.
They came to prominence when Bin Laden used to give them recorded tapes and interviews post 9/11. They have comprehensive and deeper coverage on topics and geographies [1][2] where western news orgs won't focus.
Beware though, they have biases too like everyone, particularly on covering Qatar and Middle East. The government funds them as tool of geopolitical soft power by creating an honest dependable news, no different from UK with BBC but without the colonial undertones, on average with global topics they are a solid source.
[1] In particular areas with some Muslim population, i.e lots of Africa, East Asia etc
Is this really the middle class U.S family reality?