Last week Canada’s largest newspaper, the Toronto Star, announced its plans to tear down its subscriber paywall in favor of a free digital tablet edition. The investment, which could cost as much as $14 million, will occur over the course of the next year and will be done in partnership with La Presse, which launched its own interactive tablet edition in April 2013.In a press release announcing the partnership, Star publisher John Cruickshank said he has been impressed with La Presse because it has established “deep engagement” with a younger audience. In a follow-up conference call, Cruickshank said La Presse is getting readers’ attention for 45 minutes a day on weekdays and up to 60 minutes on Saturdays.”These are numbers we haven’t seen in the digital world at all to date,” said Cruickshank.The announcement comes on the heels of parent company Torstar Corporation’s third quarter results in which David Holland, president and CEO, said the company’s digital offerings for Q3 were somewhat positive, but he expects “continued challenges in print advertising revenue.”With this revenue source on the decline, removing the paywall in favor of a more interactive, free digital tablet edition will create new opportunities for advertisers. With a $14 million price tag, however, the payout will have to offer huge revenue promise to be worthwhile. The free tablet edition must attract enough advertisers to make up for the loss in subscription revenue and to attract and retain readers who will no longer be tracked or marketed to directly. This seems exceptionally unwise given the success of publications like The Financial Times in using subscriber data to boost ad sales.Is abandoning one revenue stream on the promise of another, coupled with hefty start-up costs, worth the risk? Will subscribers stick around when they lose their preferred status? The La Presse+ news platform and the Toronto Star have a lot to deliver to readers and shareholders for this revenue model to be sustainable.