My apologies if I missed mention of it in your piece -- I was wondering if you've looked at the AP News website, and what you think about it? It's run as a nonprofit, the ads are less intrusive, the content is less cluttered, there's fewer and milder clickbait headlines, and it's free -- no paywall. I'm not quite sold on it -- doesn't seem to cover as much stuff -- but it's overall less disgusting than NYT and WaPo.

I think your points are really important. News is a horrible mess, and getting worse.