I don't think this is right. Even if a site goes for a subscription model, it will still be obvious which pages people click the most on, and so they will have

I don't think this is right. Even if a site goes for a subscription model, it will still be obvious which pages people click the most on, and so they will have a strong incentive to increase sports and celebrity reporting to bolster their subscriber count. The exact same incentives are there with pay-by-page. You still have to charge enough for your writers to eat, and you have the exact same incentive to tell them to write clickbait.