I’ve got my feed mostly free of the News+ articles and the blocked channels. Fairly easy, 2 steps. Here’s how:
First, open settings app and go to News. Toggle the “Restrict Stories in Today” option on. Hat tip to @Ben_Wah for that!
Next, take some time to search for sites of interest to you and follow them. You’ll soon have a sidebar full of sites. Only those you follow will show up in the “Today” section. If none of those sites are News+ sites you won’t have any of those littering your feed. Of course, you’ll lose out on some of those sites free content as well.
If you follow “Topics” you’ll notice that these will bring in articles from all of the sources including those you don’t follow and those you’ve blocked.