Advertising has always been the backbone of the news paper industry.. the old classified "rivers of gold" backed up by general news advertising. However the media barons misread the internet I was working for News Ltd in the 90s-2000s and the bosses chose to ignore the threat and therefore lost their position and power.
"In my day" the general news pages had to have 75% (good) editorial with the % dropping the further back you went until you got to sport and it went back up, this meant the advertising was valuable as it was limited and also because it was surrounded by strong editorial... it had a better chance of being read and thereby being "successful". Modern papers and websites have weak editorial and massive overpublication of ads... therefore, no readers, ads dont work = low revenue for ads = more ads needed to meet budget = less readers and the everdecreasing circle.
The only people who read newspapers now are boomers and they (eventually) are a dying market. Unless the owners come up with a real altrernative the death of newspapers is already here.
The current advertising model online fails becuase they havent worked out how to adequately monetise ads without them damaging the really important editorials.
The fact that they now sell "editorial" has destroyed trust and the next generations will never fall for it. There used to be a very strong wall between Advertising and Editorial (in my workplace.. there was a literal double brick wall between them) now they work together and that makes editorial weak, unreliable and untrusted... and people only come to the paper/site for the editorial.
A new business/model is required, but until the existing barons are dead... that wont have room to come through.