you're looking at the situation too narrowly. publishers & content creators also want esteem and influence, which they can bank to get paid later (perhaps through a related but separate effort, like product 'reviews').
publishers should support a lively rss ecosystem (actually evolve next-gen tech based on its principles) and draw revenue on the basis of visibility (and as you say, esteem and influence) this provides
people have always been paying for content. we have normalized the exception and abberation that is the "pay-with-your-private-data" business model