This is dangerous nonsense. It's true that every content business should have an upsell, and that the old rules still apply. Tiny newsletters should cost more than thick newspapers because their stories are tightly focused and their circulation is tiny, too. That doesn't mean that the Internet is dead and everything should have a cash register attached to it. The reason micropayments haven't worked as a technology is simply that a micropayment technology has always existed, called advertising.
Every newsletter gives away free samples.
If you apply the old rules to the new medium in a coherent, meaningful way, you will prosper. We're not killing trees. We can do databases. This is still the greatest new medium to hit the world since the printing press. Now that the boom is over, look beyond the bust.