It’s a chicken and egg problem. Media on the internet started doing clickbait stuff to get clicks and to be able to survive. I’d argue that you should be paying money to the ones who do an honest effort to do a good job.

Also, you talk about “big news companies” like it’s actually a thing. There are no really big news companies anywhere. Not by market cap, nor by employees, nor by any other metric. There are influential ones, such as the NYT, but none of them are really big if you compare them to any other economic sector. News is not a good business, like any other public utility: it’s essential to society but does not make any money.