Similarly, Michael Kuntz, COO of USA Today’s national network, in a podcast interview with Digiday last month, said the company plans to keep USA Today and its related sports sites free now and for the foreseeable future. National digital advertising has been a bright spot of growth over the last year, he said.

But not everyone is buying into the notion that the climate is shifting. David Chavern, president of the News Media Alliance, told me he does not see a general trend of stalled audience numbers or reduced subscription prices.

“But the business is not homogenous the way it used to be,” he added. “You’re now seeing strategies that are wildly variant” (among chains and individual papers).

Mike Klingensmith, publisher of The Star Tribune in Minneapolis, said in an interview that he was aware of the new focus on household subscriptions as a consumer issue but thought it mainly applied to fragmenting entertainment services.

“That’s a different marketplace than information and news.”

He added, “We are betting it all on digital subs” as the linchpin of a future revenue strategy. Klingensmith has set a goal of 210,000 digital subscribers by 2023, triple the current number.

Other leaders among regional papers include The Boston Globe with roughly 112,000 digital-only subscriptions, sources tell me, and annual revenues a healthy $32 million. (A Globe spokesperson confirmed the 112,000 but declined to comment on revenues.) In an interview with Nieman Lab, Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong said his paper now has more than 150,000 paid digital subscribers.

What is less clear is the price of those subscriptions, and therefore the revenue that growth generates. The Globe and Star Tribune charges more than $250 a year for digital and holds to that price. But I suspect that the fast growth numbers at some chains have been fueled by extended introductory rates and some flexibility at renewal time.

API’s Sonderman was a leadoff speaker at the industry Mega Conference in late February, with a host of encouraging measures of the potential for audience growth.

But he cautioned in our conversation that the audience seems to be splitting into three groups: those who don’t like paying for news at all, those who are willing to pay but are very value conscious (the “thrifties”), and those who will pay because they support a news organization’s mission.

With that mix, Sonderman said, “We can get people in … but the problem now is retention.”

Matt Lindsay, a consultant on pricing and other elements of audience strategy, emailed me:

“We do not have hard data to show that there is a cap on the number of subscriptions someone will take on. I believe there is a budget constraint and an attention constraint, and these two limiting factors affect customer segments differently. Household disposable income is one factor that is easy to model. The second is an individual’s propensity to read. There are households that have historically taken lots of print subscriptions. They will have two newspapers and several magazines. I believe this is what will happen digitally, too.”

All of which is to say that most publications are likely to go full speed ahead with a paid digital audience strategy despite the likelihood of fresh headwinds (to use a favorite industry term in recent years).

Only this weekend, Google announced that one leg of its current initiative to help local publishers will be six months of assistance for 10 papers through the Local Media Association in building a reader revenue development dashboard.

Meanwhile, I look for paid print subscriptions to continue to fall, a natural trend as the pool of loyal older readers thins. Also, with higher prices, consciously or not, publications are nudging audiences to the cheaper digital alternative.