One thing which could also help would be a "Netflix for news" given the pain points for payment and economies of scale. The tech scale mixing is beautiful in that way in that big providers and small can both be provided to the end user and revenue apportioned based on usage.

Of course the newspapers have been in need of reform for a long time now on many levels. Not helping is Associated Press recycling of stories across many different papers which leads to trying to compete as distributors instead of content providers. Consolidation of conglomerates seem to have only doubled down on lack of quality.