GU's paid services

Someone's not too impressed with GNL's announcement of various new paid services. I don't quite understand what the writer, Martin Conaghan, is saying -- he seems to suggest that people will stop using GU (which remains free) because they have heard that the site also provides subscriber products. His main line of argument is that charging for content will not pay for the cost of the website. Fine: that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it if you're already footing that bill. He should read Emily Bell's explanation of the changes (here), which makes it clear that GNL is committed to a free GU. Anyway, it was the following rather throwaway paragraph at the end that interested me: "If they invested an integrated publication system that doubles for the newspaper and the website, they would tackle one of their major infrastructure costs -- and the method of subscription has to be a lot more subtle than asking someone to simply cough up their credit card details in exchange for no banner ads."
(From Google)