Will Americans like Blendle?

Associated Press

NEW YORK

Americans pay to download music. They pay for TV episodes. Will they pay a few cents for news articles to escape ads and bypass subscription requirements?

The news service Blendle launched Wednesday in the U.S. with 20 news outlets, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg Businessweek. You pay 9 cents to 49 cents to read a story (with a refund if you don’t like it).

For news outlets, it means a new source of revenue and a potentially younger audience. Readers can cut through the sludge of online content and get higher-quality stories from human editors and software formulas.

Although Blendle has more than 100,000 paying, active users in the Netherlands and Germany, it could be a hard sell for Americans used to free stories online.

For one, there’s more online news available in English than in Dutch or German, and a lot of it is free.