I'd use FF with an ad blocker like uBlock Origin, ads can hog tons of resources. Here are some other tips too https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-uses-too-much-m...
For the vast majority of news websites, running without js is a huge improvement to both performance and user experience. It even gets around a lot of paywalls.
I don’t think the sites that run slowly would be helped by a “lightweight” browser, since it’s not the browser itself that’s slowing things down, but the website. The only way to fix this is to remove those features from the website, whether that’s by disabling them, or using a browser that doesn’t support those features (eg a text-only browser).
One extension to rule them all!