Anecdotal data point here, but I experienced more than just an improvement in mood. I had a completely unexpected blossoming of immense amounts of creativity.
About three weeks into my total news cut off, I started to feel sober in a way that is similar to discovering sobriety during December holiday weeks with family after non stop drinking for months in College.
Unlike the author in the linked article, I did a complete cut off from all "news-like" sources: TV news, Youtube channels, social media, reddit, podcasts that talk about current events, blogs and newsletters that discuss news - all of it.
When conversations started to become awkward (about 6 months after being completely cut off and I could no longer infer/derive the common assumptions underlying a conversation in a group), I subscribed to The Economist, directed their Espresso newsletter to Feedbin and started reading that about every other day. I found that a handful of bullet points about what's going on in the world per week is sufficient for me to keep up with any conversation I find myself in.
If there are any other news abstainers here, I'd love to hear your life hacks and tricks that you use to navigate the world.