To me, the problem is not technical. It's that most of what we call 'news' has no direct economic value to the reader. A story about Aleppo might make me better informed but there isn't really a dollar amount associated.
Whatever value it has, little of it arises from time sensitivity, high accuracy, or coming from a particular source: which is to say that reading it today at the New York Times or in a week at the Economist or sometime in between at USA Today is pretty much the same.
News sources for ordinary news are largely fungible. The typical story behind a paywall can be replaced by one that isn't. What isn't fungible is the quality of the reporting. That's why individual sites can collect subscriptions.
Anyway, a service with many sources and an app is back to selling on the aggregate model with the additional complexity of negotiating with the sources and the risk of users avoiding payment using the open web.
Whatever value it has, little of it arises from time sensitivity, high accuracy, or coming from a particular source: which is to say that reading it today at the New York Times or in a week at the Economist or sometime in between at USA Today is pretty much the same.
News sources for ordinary news are largely fungible. The typical story behind a paywall can be replaced by one that isn't. What isn't fungible is the quality of the reporting. That's why individual sites can collect subscriptions.
Anyway, a service with many sources and an app is back to selling on the aggregate model with the additional complexity of negotiating with the sources and the risk of users avoiding payment using the open web.
Good luck.