Well the challenge with that is avoiding making the articles stale for the wider public, given that the news typically focuses on current events. An article about, say, the negotiations to avoid the impending US government shutdown would be stale by the time it gets to the general public under such a model, so then we're effectively back to the hated paywall to get the information in a useful timeframe.
I think it could work. People who need timely US government shutdown news will pay for it. And the rest of us will wait for Carol to tell us about it at the microwave in the break room, anyway.