I understand that effective journalism costs money to produce, proficient journalists should get and will go where they are paid, and sites need funds to maintain their operations. All that makes sense. However, I don’t read one website I use Lemmy and internet searches to find news I’m interested in reading. I maybe go to the same paywalled news site twice a week at most, but rarely if ever quarce a month. It would make no sense for me to have a subscription to any paywalled news site even if I wanted to spend money. I have no option other than to use proxies, assume the article from others’ comments, or just read the title.
The internet news media system sucks, but I don’t see a solution.
Your local library may have a digital subscription to newspapers, though the coverage may be delayed a day or two.
Also, pbs, npr etc do a lot of daily reporting for free.
If you’re lamenting that the best journalists don’t let you have the biggest news on demand, well yeah, if you could just buy the biggest/greatest hits in terms of clicks etc, the journalists (and the news ecosystem) might be in serious trouble.