Media payment systems work best with a clear transactional boundary and gatekeeper. Bundling models are vastly more successful than unbundling ones.
In a tax-supported scheme, the tax collector serves that role. In a ticketbox, it's the literal gate or door itself. For advertising-supported media, it's the publisher or broadcaster, gatekeeping in a three-way branch between advertisers, creators/talent, and audience (similarly, cable providers). In donor-based broadcasting, the broadcaster intermediates between individual donors and content producers.
As an alternative to a governmental progressive-tax-based system, a natural gateway exists at the ISP level, for which a sufficiently effective gating, revenue-collection, and content-payment system might work. I'd outlined that about three months ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26893033
There are access-based royalty systems such as ASCAP / Harry Fox, though my sense is that for more substantial text-based content (similarly: data-backed reporting, deep analysis, and probably a fair bit of serial media of the video or podcast variety), linking payment to publishers or studios, who can support a staff of creators (writers, artists, actors, directors, support personnel) would be preferred to the music/broadcast model.
Your problem is you're trying to dam a flat plain. You need to find a suitable dam site, and it's probably the ISPs. On the other hand, they're going to need systems for that service: content negotiation, payment collection, royalties or subscription payments, etc.
The distinction my model has from a traditional micropayments or subscription model is that the provision level is universal. A service subscriber pays in a flat fee, they get an all-you-can-eat plan. The payment differentiation is between the aggregator and the creating studio (somewhat similar to current cable subscriptions).
Note that total OECD content spend is roughly $100/capita. Advertising runs many times that, at ~%$600 billion for the 1 billion inhabitants of the OECD, about $600/capita. "Free online content" costs the average household of 4 over $2,400 a year.