And while you do have a point when it comes to the history of paying for the news, i think there's a clear distinction between paying for a paper newsletter or Cable TV, and having to pay for a small, individual article, no more than 2 pages long. (Because let's be real, so far there are no news websites worth paying a subscription for).
I'd say, a combination of publicly funded news sources, like bbc, pbs and reuters. Which are free sources, so that kindof disproves my point, but these do mostly cover the basics. Local news or news about stuff you're interested in, is usually not covered there.
News websites, most of which were and still are papers, have used sales and subscriptions to pay for journalists since they first bought printing presses. Ads have never been enough to keep them afloat.
Me not easing off the pedals enough when changing gears on an internal hub bike... and then hearing the hub fully engage the new gear later on with crunching noises ๐ฅด๐ฅด
Most of them will just put up a soft-paywall, which are rather easy to get around. Sometimes as easy as clearing your cookies (or using an incognito tab).
It depends on the site but there's a few different ways to get around it. For example I didn't even realize business insider had a paywall because somehow my AdBlock removes it. Some websites work with 12ft.io but lots block it now. If it's one of the websites that give a limited amount of free articles open it in private browsing mode. And for others archive links seem to work.