Remove items from News on SharePoint Communication Site

You can change the promoted state to 0, which makes the site a "regular" site page, not a News page. To do that you first have to expose Promoted State in a view (choose a flat view to make it easier to edit). (Use the + in the library view and then select Promoted State and be sure to press Apply.) Once you ahve exposed the column, you can change the order by editing the view.

Then, in quick edit, change promoted state from 2 (news) to 0 (site page). I think the challenge with this approach is that the page still exists and it can still be found in search and you now have it mixed in with "regular" site pages. You could also add a column to Site Pages and "tag" the page as Archive or something like that - but unless you un-publish, it will still be visible in search.