I pay for a (local, non-english) newspaper. The reporting certainly isn't perfect, but:

- They seem less sensationalist, I guess because they don't depend on clicks to survive - They tell a more complete, less dumbed down story than free sources - They are more boring than free sources

If you want to be informed, the "pay for journalists" model is much better than "hope that advertisers or billionaires pay for you" model.

You can argue that being informed is pointless, but I would argue that independent people working to get informed and then questioning issues is a vital point in a democracy. One model for this is journalists, even if you're not actually reading it.