Nope, that's my feeling too. Somehow for a news site mvp in 2023 we still reinvent the wheel.
It was a replacement for an existing website (requirements are well known), so a custom CMS being part of what they were hired to build and an MVP of that CMS being what they're talking about isn't so irrational.
It's a storied tradition.
(I know that at least Django was written for a news site)
Svelte was written for a news site!
What other off the self solutions you'd recommend for such a news website?