It's a really good idea to use the "Lists" feature on Mastodon for stuff like this:

https://fedi.tips/how-to-use-the-lists-feature-on-mastodon/

I follow a bunch of news that post a ton of content that I don't want cluttering up my usual home timeline. So, I've added them to a "News" list and excluded that list from my home timeline. This way, I can either view the list whenever I wanna scroll through the news or even add an entire separate column on the advanced web interface just showing that list with news that's separated from home.

I only discovered the Lists feature recently. It's a gamer-changer.

Similarly I used to follow news groups on Mastodon, but found I was missing stories in-between my other follows. I ended up switching to RSS readers like Inoreader to handle my reading instead.

I know it’s answer-adjacent, but I hope that helps.

News sites are better to consume via RSS feeds. Check out openrss.org that has feeds for a lot of websites. There are even RSS feeds for Mastodon and Lemmy.

Better to use an rss reader for that. You can get rss feeds directly from every mastodon server I believe.

also lemmy communities, if there are some too high-volume to keep up with in your main feed: https://lemmy.world/feeds/c/fediverse.xml?sort=New

Are some of these posts, boosts as in reposts? There should be an option to hide a follower's boosts to prevent then from flooding your TL.

You can also hide replies and use key words filters to help keep your TL tidy.

Eta: links

Somehow get them to have a separate feed/account for each writer, as well as each section,

and only subscribe to those subsections of their output YOU care about.

I don't expect ANY newspaper to have the working-brains to understand this concept.

Enforcement/enshittification is the only religion which fits in the heads of "executives", nowadays, right?

Unfortunately, that's the proper answer.