The question most asked by journalists just now, aside from the routine one about Brexit, is how their trade will be funded in future. Indeed, at local level, there is increasing concern about whether there will be any trade at all.

Look at the state of the big three regional publishers. JPI Media, owner of the i newspaper, the Scotsman, The Yorkshire Post and about 200 more titles, was founded last November from the ashes of Johnston Press after it went into administration. It began this year by announcing a series of cover price rises and followed up with a review aimed at relocating offices and merging newsrooms (a euphemism for reducing journalistic staff).

Newsquest, publisher of 165 “news brands” across Britain, including the Herald in Glasgow, the South Wales Argus and the Echo in Southampton, is owned by the US media giant Gannett. It is now the target of a hostile takeover bid by a company known for aggressive cutting of jobs, which is ultimately controlled by a New York hedge fund without a shred of interest in journalistic output.

Reach, the largest of the trio with about 260 titles including the national Mirror brands and leading papers in Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, is trading profitably but regularly closes or merges titles. Three – in Essex, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire – went last week.

Drip by drip by drip, the print “platforms” disappear and with them go journalists, thereby restricting the replacement online coverage, some of which, it should be said, remains of excellent quality. When the government’s review into the sustainability of high-quality journalism was launched last year, it was claimed that newspapers produced more original journalism than broadcasters and websites combined.

That review, led by Dame Frances Cairncross, is continuing to take evidence amid what is rightly described as a crisis. She will surely have noted the latest news that old media’s digital competitors, based in the US but also attempting to serve British audiences, are finding it difficult to fund journalism. BuzzFeed is to cut 15% of its staff, while Verizon Media is seeking 7% cutbacks at newsrooms such as Huffington Post, AOL and Yahoo.

So what is to be done? Pessimists think we are doomed to a world without journalism. Optimists fall into two categories: the Micawbers who believe it will come right in the end, as if by magic; and the Googlers who have adopted the digital revolution’s mantra, innovate or die.

Let’s forget the pessimists and, while we’re at it, let’s forget the Micawbers, too, because, clearly, something must be done. To that end, I spent an afternoon last week in London’s Covent Garden talking to two Googlers, innovators who believe they have the answer to the travails of the news industry.

Cairncross referred to both in September last year as “entrepreneurs with ingenious schemes to help newspapers improve online revenues”. Dominic Young, founder of a startup called Agate, believes he can persuade readers to pay for access to newspaper and magazine content, while Rowly Bourne, co-founder of a startup called Rezonence, believes he can persuade advertisers to pay a sensible amount for their ads by providing them with proof that the ads have been read and understood.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rowly Bourne’s Rezonence aims to prove adverts have been read. Photograph: Rezonence

The two men, whose businesses happen to be only streets apart, are warm about each other while remaining utterly convinced that their particular project will prove to be the transformational one. They both talked a good game. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? But, given the current state of play, who would wish to disavow a man who says with such passion: “I left the City to join the startup community with the sole mission of saving journalism.”

That was Bourne, a former mergers and acquisitions wallah, pushing his Rezonence agenda. He argues that publishers are making as little as 50p per reader per year from digital ads. In reaction, many of them have erected paywalls which, of course, restricts access to journalistic material. Moreover, readers who do pay for access are irritated by the number of ads that intrude on their reading experience.

“I believe there is a better way,” he says. “Instead of a paywall, we call it a freewall. It’s a simple cost-per-engagement mechanism in which readers are presented with a single advertisement. In order to read the full article, they are required to answer a relatively simple question below the ad. This proves to the advertiser that the readers have paid attention to their brand.”

Bourne, who attributes the freewall invention to his “rocket scientist” co-founder, Prash Naidu, is convinced that revenue from advertisers using his scheme would, to use his phrase, “allow publishers to sustainably monetise their digital content”. According to his company’s own estimates, freewall access to a site by, say, 10 million users would produce more than £10 per reader. By contrast, it is doubtful if paywalls produce 60p per reader.

Several publishers are trying out the freewall at present, and Rezonence has also worked alongside Sky UK to help with data enrichment. Sky’s audience targeting specialist, Sandy Ghuman, says the relationship has been “wholly positive” in helping to enhance their customers’ profiles.

Young’s idea is altogether different because he seeks to enhance what, in print, is known as circulation revenue. He has developed a method aimed at encouraging readers to make payments into an online wallet. They pre-pay an amount into the wallet, which gives them access to a range of outlets, and the price of each article is deducted by the publisher. Each site can charge as much or as little as it thinks appropriate. When the wallet is empty, the reader can top it up.

The micropayment model is not, itself, new. But the wallet idea is. Young, who spent 20 years in a number of senior roles at News UK (formerly News International), contends that his pay-as-you-go Agate system “restores the link between popularity and revenue for the media”. At least five sites, including Popbitch and Archant’s the New European, are using the method already.

Meanwhile, as every online Guardian reader knows, the paper has enjoyed success by asking readers for voluntary contributions. More than 1 million people worldwide have made a donation over the past three years, with 500,000 of them paying on a regular basis.

No one can be certain which of these funding models will work in the long term and, incidentally, they are not mutually exclusive. But they should give journalists hope that there is a light at the end of the tunnel we’ve been walking down for the last 20 years or so.