All major new sources have paid articles. It even happens in television news, especially for local TV news where segments consist of three things primarily: 1. Local stories, 2. national stories, 3. paid stories. The paid stories are done as a form of advertising, they are either acquired by the company itself (they have sales departments) or come from one of the services they subscribe to. Print media does the same thing and since online news websites are based on the workings of legacy (print and television) media, it is expected that they work the same way.
In the early internet things were different because those legacy media corporations did not have a large foothold. Sure they had their own websites but there were many other websites that sprang up where news was being delivered by non-affiliated aka regular people. This is "on the streets" reporting which is usually better in at least that it is organic. Over time those new internet alternatives disappeared, either were bought by the new guard of online media (who were able to suplant legacy media since they were not quick enough to adapt) or disappeared over time like forums. Independent media barely exists now and the on-the-streets equivalent is only found on social media sites.
There is always going to be bias. The big company's bias is driven by money and the regular person bias is their own opinions. You won't ever escape that as there are far too few people who are able to deliver information in that way. And if metrics are correct, people tend to prefer news that is biased or opinionated more than just straight information. Straight info is the domian of specialized fields (science and finance) and the average person is not interested in that type of information.
