Subtitle no longer appears as excerpt text on post cards

Hi there,

We’ve noticed a recent change in how excerpts are displayed on post cards in our Newspaper theme. Previously, the subtitle field would appear under the post title (used as the excerpt text). However, now every excerpt seems to be auto-generated from the post content instead.

This is causing an issue for us because our posts follow a strict structure and all begin with the same intro text, so the auto-generated excerpts are repetitive and not useful.

Here’s what I’ve tried so far:

Cleared all caches (site and browser)

Checked the Theme Panel for any related settings

Verified that the subtitle is saving correctly (it is)

Confirmed that the excerpt field is empty (we don’t have it enabled for our custom post types)

Switched to the parent theme (instead of the child theme) to test — same behavior

Disabled all non-theme-related plugins to rule out conflicts

Could you please confirm if this is now the expected/default behavior, or if something may have changed in a recent update?
If it’s not intended, could you point me to how we can restore the previous behavior where the subtitle was used as the excerpt text on post cards?

Thanks in advance for your help!