News is ham-fisted as much by news organizations themselves as much as it is Apple. They don't want to sell through the News+ subscriptions, they want to tease a few articles and then upsell you to their subscription.

News organizations have really become quite aggressive about negotiating these things now, I think in large part because Meta (aka Facebook at the time) screwed them badly when it stopped revenue sharing.

This leads to a situation where a product that actually could at least be good and serviceable is a mess. They don't see News+ as being a positive to their businesses to bundle it into the subscription.

edit: I'm open to hearing others on this. I am only pointing out both Apple and the publishers are at fault for varying aspects of why Apple News+ ends up being a mediocre product

That seems really short-sighted. A fair share of more than $100/year is a lot of money for news.