Is it news sites fault or is it the fault of web standards/browser developers for failing to build any viable mechanisms for monetizing content?

The issue is hardly isolated to news outlets. It's endemic to the web.

Yeah, and I think it's pretty much impossible to solve.

Look what happened with Netflix. They actually got it right, a reasonable price for a bunch of stuff which would end up appropriated based on demand (they needed to have the disk to rent.) And how you have a bunch of players trying to compete in the space, each with it's exclusive content to try to make you choose them.

And look what's happened with Google's "news". It's more and more and more clickbait. I used to think the answer was a small charge per article, run through some aggregator that tracked payment. But these days we see things designed to get you to open the page, not to actually provide value. Or look at the problems Amazon has had with it's Kindle Unlimited stuff--books designed to game the metrics, groups engaging in read each other's books behavior etc.