I think you could argue that a subscription model is basically trying to make you not think about that. Look at gyms and how they want you to forget to come in a little bit and not evaluate it month by month

Asking up front has the issue that you then have to think about money every time you open an article - a lot of friction

But I think that's the problem: people don't look at subscriptions for news the same way as they look at a gym, for example.

People understand you gotta pay to go to the gym. News, on the other hand, you can get for free (give or take ads and tracking).

The gym question is "am I gonna use this?" The news question is "do I need this?" or "is this sufficiently better than the alternatives to justify the cost?"

Edit: and to touch on the "per-article" aspect, odds are that people might spend let's say ~$2/month with a publisher through article reads, but not $5/month for a subscription.