The Axios newsletter first model is pretty good. They have direct access to subscribers without the baggage of actually printing anything. They’ve also done a good job of matching news content to attention spans. You get bullet points for the news with the ability to followup on what you want.
It does mean that it’s not as good for long-form journalism, but that’s not where the market is headed (for better or worse).
One of the other areas where Axios was moving (and where I think the valuation is coming from) is that they have expanded their DC insider model to more local sources. In an era where local news is struggling, having a setup for high quality local news without the overhead of a physical paper is great.