I don't know why people still think that. NYTimes is basically back to their glory days of revenue and profit, the FT is doing extremely well, etc etc.
Non paywalled news outlets will be clickbait - they are 100% dependent on advertising revenue and need to get clicks. Paywalled sites generally aren't.
Because while the "top-tier" media outlets are doing extremely well (NYTimes, WSJ, FT, etc.), everyone else is suffering. Huge numbers of media outlets have closed over the past 20 years and there are now far fewer journalists in the United States. Local newspapers that haven't closed are often operating a skeleton crew. And this trend has consequences: numerous studies have linked the decline of small, single-subject and local journalism to increases in political polarization and local corruption. (I worked at Harvard's Shorenstein Center which did much of the research.)
Non paywalled news outlets will be clickbait - they are 100% dependent on advertising revenue and need to get clicks. Paywalled sites generally aren't.