Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure that educating readers would be that difficult if you cater to a well-cultured audience, personally I like the approach of Smashing Magazine when you use an ad blocker:

http://i.imgur.com/YpuvdlX.png

If I ran a blog I would include the same element, some wording like "you know, creating quality content requires more effort than spewing clickbait, mind leaving us a tip to let us know that you appreciate our efforts?" and a flattr button.

Although your idea sounds like a good starting point for a website which caters to a massive audience (basically, every news website).

A simple method for that could be if the user closes the tab or navigates away before a fixed time period passes, such that it's clear they didn't have time to read much of the article, automatically cancel the payment.

I love this idea :) I hope you don't mind if I'll implement it ;)

Of course not. I dream of the ad-free web.

It's not a bulletproof idea of course, can be gamed. Users could take a screencap, or copy-paste, before the timer is up. But that's probably not worth worrying about until the model becomes widespread.

That seems reasonable.