As more news consumers have started to migrate online instead of getting their news in dead-tree form, this has caused problems for the entire business model of publishing. It raises an interesting question, though: what if there were a news equivalent of buying the one song you like from a new album for 99¢ or less? That option may be coming soon to our national newspapers like the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Will news fans use it, instead of buying all-you-can-read online subscriptions or pasting the article’s URL into a different Web browser? A startup in the Netherlands called Blendle will soon launch in this country, and has been doing pretty well in its native country. The New York Times was an early investor in the company back when it was exclusive to the Netherlands.

Better yet: if you open an article and don’t like it, you can request a refund. The idea has its detractors, who argue that there’s no shortage of free online news outlets in English, and that the system won’t work outside of the relatively tiny and specialized Dutch-language market.

N.Y. Times, WSJ, Washington Post Reach Pay-Per-Article Deals [Bloomberg News]

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