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The stories that drive subscriptions aren't about "news" but rather more about analysis, commentary, fact finding, great writing and, well, stories. News is a "public good" (nonrival and non excludable). What drives subscriptions to written media must be excludable (paywall).
The challenge is that a region like the Seattle metropolitan area has more than 3.5 million inhabitants. How to create an informed electorate with just paid subscriptions behind a paywall is a hard problem. Advertising supported media was well suited for mass markets, but no more
With a paywall subscription model the cost of the free users for a media business is customer acquisition cost. The front page and n articles a month = free. That cost looks like COGS but is CAC. It is number 1 below. The other costs are cannibalization and traditional CAC costs. 
