[downandout]

this mass blocking has not seemingly been the norm for newspapers or other businesses in other markets outside the EU, or noticeably stopped any businesses within it from running websites.

Of course people within the EU will continue to run websites under GDPR, they have no choice. Further, the reality is that enforcement will be squarely focused on importing cash from mid-to-large sized foreign companies. The anti-competitive goals of GDPR will not be achieved by fining EU companies to death - they'll be achieved by hobbling foreign competitors.

As for companies in other industries, I suspect that you're noticing a large number of US newspaper sites are blocking because they have a larger contingent of international visitors than most US sites do, and each one of those visitors could subject them to the enormous, arbitrary penalties included in the GDPR. Massive companies like Facebook and Google can afford to comply and deal with the numerous legal uncertainties associated with it (and have to because they receive a large percentage of their traffic from the EU). But for mid-tier media companies, compliance is an enormous expense, yet they are large enough that they would be an enforcement target. So they did the financially responsible thing: block the EU.

Finally, most smaller websites won't bother with blocking or complying, because they believe they will not be enforcement targets. This may or may not be the correct position to take; only time will tell.