Maybe I'm not 'average', but I pay $80/yr for a subscription to the Economist even though I can get all the articles free on their website.

Part of that is that I spend 12-15 hours a day on my computer for my job and side projects... being able to go outside and read my news on paper is a welcome break from that.

But the other part is that I find the reporting to be of generally high quality and depth. I think the print media that is hurt the most by the Internet are those with shorter stories and lots of ads in between. The Internet does this bite-sized content extremely well, so traditional media will have a hard time competing, but there is still demand for longer, in depth content, which is (so far) best supplied by paid reporters.

I agree to a certain point: If the difference in quality contributes enough value added, the user to pay for the service. The availability of any competing service decreases the difference and makes it much more difficult to have the user subscribe to a premium service.

Hopefully, the premium-based-monetization services would make more money and expand faster than those with the free model.