I don't understand. Where are they supposed to be getting the audience from? Do you consider clicks from Google to be worthless? Are clicks from Facebook any better?
In the eshop part of the web, there are price aggregators and the eshops pay them for the traffic they are getting, i.e. exactly opposite as the news publishers demand. It would be nonsense, if the eshops demanded that the aggregators pay them, because they make use of data of their sortiment or whatever. Even Amazon pays for the referrals, it is not being paid by the referrals for the privilege of being one.
It was always that he, who brings the customers, is getting paid for that. Not vice-versa.
The only news services that would survive this regulation are the public/subsidized ones, pretty much. Maybe that's exactly the goal: eliminate independent press.
Of course it would help a lot if they also dramatically revised the way they offer their content on the internet. Many news sites are rather awful.