Edit: Also NYTimes cancelation process is AOL levels of hostile. The Economists, less so.
I share your dislike of this trend. In the physical paper days, the opinion pieces were kept within a specific section of the paper (usually end of section A, and column one on the front page), and it made a difference. Now you see people taking an opinion piece as speaking with the voice of the paper all the time.
It would make a real difference if the background of the page was different for opinion, or something, but I have no idea how to get there from here.
_The Economist_ has pretty good international coverage, but it's a weekly magazine, so a different focus, and they are not shy about their promotion of free trade and classical liberalism in the opinion sections, so you have to be ready for that.
...and their journalists are top-notch. They don't publish unconfirmed reports, and I find that they challenge my preconceived notions regularly.
I don't like op-eds either, but there are other options.
I think paying for news and not reading all of it are orthogonal. If you don't like curation, RSS is still solid.