I often wonder why the model of Dutch news site https://decorrespondent.nl/ isn't more widely followed. In a nutshell, it's:

   * Only paid subscribers can read
   * Subscribers can share an article (= copy a unique share link)
   * Shared articles are free for anyone

This makes it so that eg if some Correspondent article were submitted to HN, that'd be a share link by a subscriber, and everyone on HN can read it without a paywall. It'll say "this article was shared with you by $NAME" on top. At the same time if you then want to go to the Correspondent homepage and figure out what's been going on in NL slow news land, you can't, unless you subscribe.

They've been 100% subscriber-funded, zero ads (and I believe also zero government support but not sure), for over a decade now. It's clearly a model that works, at least their target audience (lefty, highly educated).