I would add another important caveat to this: no dark patterns in subscriptions (like call to cancel), and a reasonable price on the subscription. I would gladly pay for something like this

Yep. Professional journals can be a few 100s$ per year. So you could get quality journalism, it would just be for very few people compared to the masses.

Historically, public/mass news services were dependent on adverts or classifieds to pay for their running. That business has been consumed by ad tech.

YouTube has become a source for journalism now, but the viability of newspapers and local beats has reduced.

An "ad-free" subscription to The Guardian is $18 per month ($15 starter, students $10 a year).

They aren't funded exclusively by subscribers because that would exclude a source of revenue that enables cheaper subscriptions. But you can have no ads for a reasonable premium.

https://support.theguardian.com/us/contribute

I've been a subscriber of a dutch online-only publication called 'de correspondent' . It's ok (quit good sometimes). But you can sense they have a sliver of the budget the big newspapers in my youth had.