Do you really think people are paying for these sites? I pay for my local newspaper, but I'm not going to be subscribing to dozens of newspapers, one is more than enough.
If newspapers want more traffic they need to get together and offer bundle deals, because expecting people to pay $20 a month subscriptions for multiple newspapers is a fantasy.
Is the Apple News model sufficient?
I think there should be more of it. Negatives for the Apple News model is that it's Apple only and there is no ad-free tier. It's also app locked so you can't use ad-blockers.
But yes, something like Apple News with an ad-free tier that works with standard websites. E.g. the participating news sites should recognize whatever service token you have and serve unpaywalled content.