But people still buy magazines and newspapers all the time. pg, and many others, might not personally find value in that, but enough people do that it's still propping up a rather large industry. Why not sell content to those people?
Making money from advertising is fine, too. I mean, someone out there probably has an idea for advertising that can actually give more value back to the advertisers. But, I don't see any reason not to make money off of as many different revenue streams as possible: make money off the content from people that are willing to pay for it; make money from the people willing to pay for tools which will give them free access to content; make money from people that want to aggregate content (and help them to do it); and make money from people that don't mind seeing an ad once in a while.
Making money from advertising is fine, too. I mean, someone out there probably has an idea for advertising that can actually give more value back to the advertisers. But, I don't see any reason not to make money off of as many different revenue streams as possible: make money off the content from people that are willing to pay for it; make money from the people willing to pay for tools which will give them free access to content; make money from people that want to aggregate content (and help them to do it); and make money from people that don't mind seeing an ad once in a while.