So, you’ve got two different things here (besides the issue you’re having with News, which makes a third thing). There’s offloading an app, and there’s deleting and reinstalling an app.
TL;DR - Offload preserves app data, delete and reinstall removes app data. To fix this, you’ll probably want to do the delete and reinstall. If that doesn’t fix it, call Apple.
The long wordy version:
Offloading is done by the OS to save space. Offloading deletes the app package, but not any data stored outside the package, and will retain the icon on your home screen (with a little download icon attached to the app name) Tapping the icon of an offloaded app will automatically attempt to reinstall it. You can enable automatic offloading in Settings > General > iPhone/iPad Storage. If this is enabled, iOS will automatically offload apps that haven’t been used for a while (I’m not sure if there’s a set threshold of time) if it needs additional space.
You can also manually offload a specific app by selecting it from the list shown in Storage, which will show you how much space is occupied by the app itself and by its documents and data, and selecting “Offload App”. The text below this button states (in iOS 17, but I see no reason for any significant changes to this in iOS 18), “This will free up storage used by the app, but will keep its documents and data. Reinstalling the app will place back your data if the app is still available in the App Store.”
(This points up the main risk of offloading: if an app you’ve offloaded is removed from the App Store before you reinstall it, your data will be unusable unless you’ve used a tool such as iMazing to back up the app to a Mac. In the case of Apple News+, this shouldn’t be an issue. But it’s always a good idea to verify the availability of a particular app before offloading or deleting it, if you intend to reinstall it.)
Deleting and reinstalling an app will delete the app package and its associated data, and any documents in its private storage area (documents saved to Files or a cloud service such as iCloud, or exported via iMazing or a similar tool, should be retained in those locations). This is the one you would use to actually “reset” an app when it’s not working properly; offloading doesn’t actually remove any of the support files that are the most common cause for apps misbehaving.
Offloading is unlikely to help in troubleshooting a misbehaving app unless the issue is being caused by a lack of free space or corruption of something in the app package. It literally just deletes the actual app package (like deleting the .app package on a Mac without deleting associated files in ~/Library). Corruption of this kind is uncommon; it’s far more likely that a support file is getting corrupted, not the contents of the app package, as properly designed apps don’t self-modify the contents of the app package after installation. Whereas if the problem is a lack of free space, offloading the app itself won’t help, because it won’t take up any less space when redownloaded; you would want to offload other apps to free up space.
As for your specific problem with Apple News+, I’m only guessing here as I don’t use it, but it sounds to me like a file that stores something related to the app’s ability to download issues is getting corrupted, repaired when the OS (and app) updates, then corrupted again. Under such circumstances, offload is unlikely to help at all. Delete and reinstall is your only viable choice between the two.
However, you may be in luck with your data. You stated you’re using Apple News+, which is the paid subscription service. Your subscriptions in that should be stored in iCloud, not just on your device, because you can use one subscription on multiple devices more or less seamlessly (so they say—as I said, I’ve never used it myself). So if you delete the app and its local data, then reinstall it from the App Store, it should be able to reacquire your data from iCloud, in which case you haven’t lost anything important. I don’t know for certain that all the data would be backed up in iCloud, but the important things should be.
The bigger question is what’s causing the affected file to keep getting re-corrupted. If it’s something in the affected local file itself, this should fix it, as the local file (whichever one it is that’s affected) will be recreated anew when you reinstall the app and have it get the data from iCloud. But if the issue comes from something that’s part of what gets stored on iCloud, then not only will the issue likely recur as it has after updates, but it could also be expected to recur on any other device you use the same News+ subscription on. Since the problem recurs after every update, this is a distinct possibility.
The easiest way to test this, of course, is to log in to your subscription on a different device and see if the problem shows up within the same typical timeframe; if it does, your problem is most likely in data stored on iCloud, not just on your device, and reinstalling the app alone probably wouldn’t be enough to fix it. If you don’t have a different device to test with, though, then it’s not such an easy option.
So, my suggestion is to first try using News+ on a different device if you have access to one. If the problem doesn’t show up there after the usual amount of time, then it’s almost definitely local to your device, and deleting and reinstalling the app should fix it. If the problem does show up on another device, then the problem isn’t simply local to your device, but is getting into the data stored on iCloud, and a call to Apple may be in order. If you don’t have access to another device, then just go ahead and try the delete and reinstall. If the problem still recurs, then, again, you’ll probably want to call Apple.
Hope this wall of verbiage helps you!