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Is the Economist profitable?

That's one example that comes to mind of a potentially viable model - less clickbait, shorter news cycle, more depth, with a print option.

Online-only news has been a race to the bottom, I'd guess that profitability is more likely at the higher end.

Yes[1]. As are organizations like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, the New York Times, Gannett, and Hearst Communications.

That is a good list -- interestingly, only Gannett (USA Today, amongst many other papers) and Reuters don't have paywalls.

That isn't a criticism, just recognition that even though the other sites are still ad supported, that alone isn't enough.

Gannett's many local newspapers definitely have paywalls.

They've also been pretty unprofitable in recent years. https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/GCI/earnings

They don’t really do investigative journalism though. Most of their articles are summary + opinion