Jeremy Horwitz, in an insightful op-ed piece for 9to5mac:

Advertising is an easy target: it’s an eyesore, slows down web pages, and — in the wrong hands — compromises your privacy. But whether you accept it or hate it, advertising is also the reason you don’t have to pay for your news. As Ben Lovejoy noted last month, “without ad revenue, 9to5Mac wouldn’t exist; it’s that simple.” And he’s right: surveys suggest that the vast majority of people do not want to pay for the news they consume, and the few who do can’t pay enough to keep their favorite publications afloat for the long term. Ads keep publications alive.

Thanks to the introduction of ad-blocking technology in iOS 9, some people think Apple wants to help users get rid of ads. But that’s not Apple’s goal. Yesterday’s debut of Apple News shows that it’s actually angling to replace the ads you know, build upon them, and take a cut of their revenue…

Hard to argue this logic. Advertising is the necessary evil that keeps the news afloat. As they’ve done time and time again, Apple is building a revenue bottleneck, a path that funnels ad money into Apple, while doing their best to eliminate paths that allow ad money to flow elsewhere.

This type of business model organization is something that Apple does very well. They take something chaotic (like the music business) and build a simpler model with very well defined rules. And as part of the reorganization, they get a steady slice of the pie.