You can be rich or lazy, but probably not both

I saw this prompt early this morning, and spent a fair amount of time today trying to think of a “crazy” idea.

But all I came up with was a GOOD idea.

With all the newspapers and magazines that are behind a paywall, I probably run into three or four articles a week that I can’t read. So here’s my idea. Article credits. I need a company to take my $10 a month, give me 20 article credits in return and let me use them to read individual articles in the newspapers or magazines of my choice. The company keeps 20% of the money, and the newspaper/magazine gets $0.40 per article.

I am not subscribing to the Arizona Republic. EVER. So, if they get forty cents from me for that Gabby Gifford interview, that is forty cents that they would never have gotten otherwise. I would either just not read the article, or choose to use an archive site (like archive.ph) to read it outside of the scope of the paywall. In neither case are they generating any money from my interest. This way, they get some incremental income from a completely new stream, and I don’t have to be annoyed with them, or do the extra work (and feel the extra guilt for bypassing the paywall). I feel good, they get some scratch, the company that is managing it gets some scratch. Everyone wins.

So…can someone with deep pockets make this happen?