News is a strange product, and one that I think a lot of people in tech get wrong. The atomic unit of journalism is not an article....it's the reporting. Even deciding to write an article is an act based on the analysis of the reporting.
Further, a good headline often tells the story itself -- and that is implicitly included when we talk about links. How often have you read a headline, and then not clicked on the link? Probably a bunch. But you still know OJ died, or the bridge in Baltimore collapsed, etc, etc. That level of reporting, the confirmation that it happened, all that stuff -- all was expensive, all required labor and other resources.
So -- from the consumer perspective, what happens? You get clickbait. The publishers have to recoup the expenses somehow, and they need you to click through to show you ads, or a paywall. "This item in your cabinet could kill you!" Or, they cover the site with ads, hoping to get as much out of the few clicks they get.
I am not saying this in support of the CJPA, nor in support of Google. Just saying this is an existential crisis that came from the simple act of aggregation.
(Disclaimer/shameless plug: I'm a former journalist building https://www.forth.news, a social-media like news feed for reading news. While we are not there yet, our goal is to be able to revshare with the reporters/newsrooms who write the stories to be able to monetize those headlines.)