Are you f*ing kidding? Sponsored articles are ads. The ad industry-driven conflation of editorial and ads is a major reason the media industry is suffering. Many publishers have become indistinguishable from one another thanks to their reliance on ad tech content – "native content" in Facebook parlance and the false hope of social media-driven traffic. In so doing, they've helped empower Google and Facebook and surrendered their own brand power, becoming purveyors of generic sponsored slurry.
The original poster is not wrong about the problems with tracker-laden news sites. But he hasn't given much thought to solutions.
"I don’t have a fix all band-aid to replace current revenue streams for news websites..."
Do let us know when you figure it out. A lot of people have been trying to do so without success.
Subscriptions...great for the publishers with huge audiences, not so much for smaller news sites. How many news subscriptions will people pay for after they sign on for the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal? There's a limit to the monthly bleed people will tolerate.
And users donations are a bandage not a business model. People rely on donations for unexpected medical expenses in the US – that's a sign of system failure not a model for sustainability.
If an answer is found, it will probably have to do with weaning people off social media. Or we'll just have to enjoy our cat videos while investigative journalism withers.