Yeah. Everyone boils this down to a debate between paywalls and ads. For example, from this article:

> When those publishers are in the news business, this is another trade-off - pay walls (and privacy!) conflict with reach and public purpose

But there are other ways. One which is already successful is community supported free content, just like this article's author is already doing: they release it early to paying people and then release it publicly. They still get paid, and they still get the reach. I even support quite a number of people on Patreon who provide no benefit to the payer. I like the content they produce, so I pay them to make it, regardless of who else gets to view it.

I think this is one of the most harmful effects of advertising-based business models: it kills other business models. If advertising pays well, then there is incentive for someone else to "steal" your content and slap ads on it. But if we destroy advertising as a viable business model, then that incentive disappears, and we can start exploring other business models.