Single digit cents is not a large fee, but blockchain fees are dynamic. And the more traffic, the more expensive. I would not appreciate if that 2.6 cents suddenly became $2.60. Also the maximum number of transactions for Bitcoin (not sure etherium) is about 10/s. Processors like Visa and MasterCard process thousands of transactions per second. And if every article read is another transaction that would need at least 1-2 orders of magnitude more transactions. The way I see it, blockchain is a broken model for micro payments. If I am missing something, please let me know.

I buy a magazine where $3 gets you 114 short articles, each about 1/3rd of a page. So I'm paying 2.6¢ per article, if I read every single one.

Some people dream of 'micropayments' at a similar price point. Being able to buy a single article for about 2.6¢.