There is no "document" or "application" model, the distinction is mostly just vibes.
News sites are meant to be read, therefore they are "documents." They are also applications, because all websites, even static ones, are also applications. Once you add hyperlinks and external resources, it ceases to be purely a document.
Adding a script tag to an HTML page doesn't transform it from one to the other.
Agree that it's all vibes-based, but look at how the newspapers understand their own sites - in particular, what they consider to be an "article", how they edit those articles, and the pipeline from that to the article being rendered in the end user's browser.
News sites are meant to be read, therefore they are "documents." They are also applications, because all websites, even static ones, are also applications. Once you add hyperlinks and external resources, it ceases to be purely a document.
Adding a script tag to an HTML page doesn't transform it from one to the other.