There is a Dutch company called Blendle[0] that has figured this out pretty well locally, and also has a BETA program running in the United States[1]. Articles are often much cheaper than 1-3 dollars, I don't recall paying more than 1 eur. They also combat clickbait titles and intros by providing a refund when the article turns out lousy.
Just signed up for it. It looks good, but I am seeing a bunch of clickbait. Already had to use the refund feature once.
But the bigger problem is that I generally come to articles through social media or links from friends. Do I have to search for every article to see if they released it on Blendle? Also, a lot of them seem to change titles so that is actually pretty difficult.
[0]: https://blendle.com/ [1]: https://launch.blendle.com/