To play devil's advocate... why should a publisher be forced to give away their content for free? It costs money to produce and serve content. Like it or not, advertising pays their bills.
I have noticed a few of the consent pop ups couching the choice explicitly in this manner. If you don't grant consent to us/our 3rd parties tracking you we will still show you ads, they will just be less relevant.
Advertising doesn't actually require the detailed level of tracking that is used today. Physical newspapers survived with a much more limited set of data when convincing advertisers to place ads.
One possible outcome is that publishers have to display even more ads to make up the shortfall. That'll just annoy users even more and so they'll either stop visiting the site make ad-blocking even more prevalent. Either way, the publisher is really the one losing out.