If paying for the real thing meant they were priced appropriately (there are many facets to this) and didn't shove tons of ads and didn't track users, it has a

If paying for the real thing meant they were priced appropriately (there are many facets to this) and didn't shove tons of ads and didn't track users, it has a chance of working. Take Ars Technica as an example (I'm not a subscriber). Its paid subscriptions neither show you ads nor have a single tracker (it did take some time to get there though). For people in a country like India, where print newspapers (that have ads) can be bought for a whole month for about ₹150 or so (a little more than $2), subscriptions to foreign sources are quite expensive. Absurdly, there are newspapers in India that charge more for the digital edition (compared to print), while still showing plenty of ads and having the benefit of adding trackers! (Example: The Hindu) Unless mainstream news outlets improve their business models and the user experience, I for now have very less sympathy for them. The fact that Facebook and Google are a lot more worse for everyone is why I even have sympathy for these organizations in the first place.