No ads would mean you will have to pay per page view like in MicrosoftNetwork/MSN95 (Bill Gates plan of the "information highway" that failed in 1995 thanks to the free internet), and Teletext based systems from the 1980s like BTX in Germany.
I think the point is that who needs them? Most news networks serve up propaganda and useless bullshit anyway IMO.
Endpoints that don't depend on advertising dollars to keep the servers running will always be there (like GitHub, Hacker News, IRC, Amazon, eBay, Craigslist, etc.) if people want them.
Right. News is a commodity. I am sure nobody would be surprised to learn that the results on google news are mostly media outlets that use google's doubleclick service.
As long as it's easy to donate to sites you find valuable on the internet then advertising free sites will flourish.
