If you can turn off swipe left to Google news, get a RSS feed reader, put a full screen widget on page one and all your apps on page 2. Make page 2 your default for home.
Oh, no. Lawnchair has been back for a while now, they are rebuilding it from the ground up and deliver updates through their Telegram channel, though it still lacks a lot of the old features. LibreChair was a fork of the old LawnChair that aimed to replace the google centric features.
I'm unsure whether a drop-in replacement exists. I use Lawnchair. It doesn't have the newsfeed when swiping left, but if you're okay with changing your flow a bit it could be good (enough) for you. You could create something with widgets (or maybe plugins) that replicate what you currently have.
Personally I use the news widgets from Stock Widget app. You cannot choose the news source but instead you can specify the topics you like by adding some keywords.