Ten years ago Google News was excellent because it was easy to read multiple perspectives on a story by clicking multiple articles. I ended up visiting more news sites than I would have otherwise simply to get a better picture.

Nowadays it's much harder to get that comparison, and I avoid certain sites because I know they're paywalled, or because they present information in video form, which IMO is somewhat reader-hostile (you can't skim a video). So to the extent that your guess is correct, it is something that the news sites have brought upon themselves.