You're presupposing that these blogs are producing content worth paying for. The unfortunate truth is that the overwhelming majority of blogs (99.9%+) are not.
Then why is everyone so nostalgic for the old days of the blogosphere to return? If blogs are all worthless, then we shouldn't care that they're disappearing and/or being put behind paywalls; we haven't lost anything.
I blog for my own satisfaction, and my blog has no ads on it, and I don't charge visitors. I'm happy to have a few dozen readers.
That's what people are bemoaning the loss of: the before times, when people did interesting stuff without regard for whether it could be monetized or not.
