I like your categorization of newspapers as data vending machines. A problem I often have is that I want to read a single story, but there's a paywall that wants me to subscribe to the whole newspaper. I'd rather be able to pay for just that one story. Just zap it and read.

To be honest, that's the reason I recently subscribed to The Epoch Times (besides the really low rate), because I often see interesting stories there, but there's a paywall... (and I don't always feel like using 12ft.io )