How about someone designing electronic components and giving them away for free? I have a funny feeling you wouldn't like that one too much
It happens already, to a huge degree, in software. It doesn't happen much in hardware (which is what I make money out of, mostly) because hardware can obviously never be free, so nobody is going to give it away, and hardware
designs (schematics) tend to be mostly heavily customised, and implementing one in hardware is too much hassle unless you are into real volume. And the chip manufacturers give away enough in their application notes to get you started.
The free software thingy has been out of the bag for years. Yeah, I am sure some people don't like it. Practically every consumer IT product (routers, mp3 players, etc) runs some ripoff of linux. But if you want to be in that business you need to run like crazy anyway.
I think printed mags simply have to find a different content to the web. They cannot use hyperlinks to expand on detail, which means that what might be "educational depth" cannot be achieved.
They also have to be less critical, due to the need to not upset advertisers. This culminates in the likes of the 99% shoe-licking U.S. Flying magazine which has become 99.9% shoe-licking since Mac left.
And I am sure trip reports, of various qualities, are two a penny nowadays.
Take a look at the photography industry, they're having to learn to deal with free (joe bloggs with his DSLR), and in many cases they're doing it very well.
That happened years ago. Everybody with Photoshop thought he is now a graphic artist
But I have to say that the business was in some cases asking for it. I was mightily ripped off by industrial photographers in the 1970s, who retained copyright, retained negatives, prohibited everything except 1:1 or scaled reproduction, and eventually sold me the negative (1 negative) for £1000. Even back then, somebody with a set of lights could have done the same job with my OM1... so when photography became more accessible, that business more or less collapsed. But you still need a creative person to do creative work. It is the mundane stuff, which a lot of industrial (product) photography is, which has become mostly easy to DIY.