It is clearly of high value for people that can to make informed decisions. Unfortunately, most decisions people are making are not informed by the news. Such that any attempt to get people to pay for it will be difficult.
What I've noticed both through my own experience and research of the history of journalism is that business news has, in general tended to be far more reliable then general-consumption news, if also strongly self-serving to the interests of business and fiance.
Amongst the best quality news sources that I find presently are the Economist and Financial Times, with Foreign Policy also standing high. The Wall Street Journal had a very strong (if of course pro-business) reputation when it was still owned by the Dow Jones corporation, somewhat less so of late. Newswires such as AP, Reuters, and AFP are also generally quite good. You can also find regional business news publications of high quality and relevance, especially as compared with their non-business local counterparts.
In debunking a century-plus old hoax (the "Banker's Manifesto") a few years back, one of the more amusing bits I'd found was that of all the claims it made, one which was more easily addressed was a mention-in-passing of the failures of several banks. It turns out that of all the things that a bank-centric publication is interested in, it's the solvency of financial institutions, and the bulk of any given issue addressed insolvencies and failures, of which those mentioned in the (bogus) manifesto made no appearance...
I suspect that a large reason for greater relevance and accuracy is that business news tends to be actionable to businesses, executives, and managers. I also suspect that misquotations and misrepresentations of interviews tend to get sharp responses. By contrast, the principle operating principle of a mass-market paper is to maximise circulation and eyeballs. At the worst of the Penny Papers this lead to outright hoaxes (e.g., the Great Moon Hoax: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Moon_Hoax>). And of course, with large circulations it was also possible to steer public opinion (e.g., exploiting the explosion of the USS Maine to incite the Spanish-American war by Hearst and Pulitzer: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Maine_(1889)#Yellow_journa...>).
But I'd suggest that the population for whom quality, relevant news is of high interest is relatively small.
I used to want to try and make the news valuable to myself. I have yet to find a way to do that, though. Such that I am unlikely to want to pay for it anytime soon. Would be neat to consider ways I could start making the news of more personal value.
There's also the 15% subscribership rate amongst NPR listeners, which suggests to me a hard-core media consumer segment. That percentage has been steady for decades, and if anything has fallen somewhat as NPR's overall listenership has expanded.
The hard-core news segment is probably on the order of 1--5% of the population.
Circulation of WSJ and NYT, print and online, is roughly 3m and 7m respectively. That's from a total US adult population of ~300m, or about 1--2% of population for each. I suspect a fair bit of overlap in subscriptions.
How much of this is a matter of interest, willingness to pay, ability to pay, or ability to access news through other means/channels, I don't know.
I think the quality has remained quite high, and the rather robust subscription numbers bear that out (millions of people paying $40/month is impressive). It helps that the WSJ news staff resisted the temptation to abandon objectivity as at NYT.
The FT and Economist are nice but FT newsroom is an order of magnitude smaller than WSJ and the Economist an order of magnitude smaller than that (if you’re subscriber who checks daily you’ll know this).
Of the three I’d keep WSJ if I had to choose. FT is very nice for an international perspective though. Economist for high level summary.
Similarly, at a state level, you know they are the same. They have data feeds that are not released to the public.
Which brings us back to my point, what is there of value in the news for most people? I can think of very little personal value there.
Now, I can see great political and public value in making sure you have an informed population. Such that I am not claiming there is no value in it. Hard to show a direct bottom line value to individuals, though. And we are discussing why individuals won't pay.