A wiki run to list valid news sources and why they should be listed, that can have discussions in the talk page, might be helpful to address many of these issues.

I used to help mod the largest Reddit news community back in the day, and it was easy to use the approach you talk about.

Now, I doubt I could. The news industry has really collapsed or been nerfed. There are small sites never heard about before doing heavy lifting and they need to be validated in a way it’s easy to use those guidelines in moderation.

To not do that is to either become increasingly reactionary to sources or get in fights about what is or is not valid.