[LatteLazy]

I'll have a stab, 2 things:

First, Google is now the largest customer of these papers. That makes it very hard for them to be critical of Google or its allies and very easy for them to be critical of Google competitiors or detractors. This is at exactly the time when there is a public debate over big tech.

Second, Google isn't paying these papers for news, it's paying them for content/clicks. The core issue with the pay per click model is that it incentivises BS, baseless pieces and it punishes actual investigaive journalism. Everything becomes a "buzzfeed top ten things you already agree with" article. That is a massive problem already, and this change reinforces it and makes it worse. I'd actually like to see this sort of thing banned, not extended.