Oh, if I may, it makes perfect sense!
It costs money to generate news stories. Be it research, operating costs, or supporting platforms (web, print, etc.) We live in a world where someone - let's for the same of it use the New York Times as an example - spends money to generate content, and that content is cut and pasted to millions of Social Media accounts in an instant. Most of the people doing this paid nothing for the content.
Think of how many Youtubers are making money from quoting news stories researched and written by someone else. More often than not, there is no attribution, and no credit given. They're essentially living off the back of the news media. As a business, this is ultimately untenable.
So, they introduce paywalls. It exists because they somehow have to generate funds in order to keep going.
As for copyright issues, I believe that's a case where the law hasn't caught up with the modern day. Copyrights at a country or continental level made sense back in the day, but in the days of the internet which knows no boundaries, it doesn't really work. Or at least, it's an annoyance. At the same time, each of our countries has its own laws regarding what is acceptable and what isn't, but these are not always the same thing. Country A might censor more than Country B, and how is that accommodated in the world today?
You know, paywalls on news sites can best be described this way: Do you think it's reasonable to pay money for a newspaper, or do you think you ought to be able to take whatever paper you want for free? They tried the free thing, and they're going broke!
