Because publishers are producing print content for a past era digitally, or, worse, already feed its bastard adapted to advertisement.
I get netflix for about 10€/month, but a weekly print newspaper (still filled with ads...) wants 30€/month (4 issues...) here, where a lesser digital only costs still 10€/month... They just don't serve the information I would pay for, but that doesn't mean the clickbaity "free" online "content" is a legit business model.
I want sober, on point, timely information on matters of shared/common interest, filtered by journalistic overview, contextualization and reliable sourcing. With the option to subscribe to niche content additions, e.g. art, culture, but of course news shouldn't be a comfort zone only, either. I don't want to co-pay for the clear special interests like the sports/soccer or housing section, at all. And I won't ever pay for opinionated outrage and intellectual masturbation, because nothing else happened or feels like anything at the moment. I don't want some mind-numbing four page zeitgeist piece on cancel culture which starts by making associative yak shaving a storytelling virtue. I want to be briefed in the morning, by my personal intelligence service, like madame president.
Publishers are not struggling, they are throwing a fit over a changing information access reality, for 15 years or something. If they cry just a bit longer now, their economic niche is gonna be completely absorbed by technological answers to the question of "What's going on?".