As the son of two journalists (one was an editor) news-editing and layout is a lot more than just using serif and playing with typography a bit
The closest thing I’ve found to something actually resembling a proper masthead’s layout would actually be this from HN a few months ago: https://cybernetic.dev/grid
Balancing high information density and readability is the key to a proper layout. You’ve erred to far on minimalist “readability”
I’d suggest looking at older Indesign/Quark Express magazines if you want to see elements of publishing layouts done digitally
There’s going to be a great layout one day that fuses the news-editing with web, but this isn’t it