Money gives you time. If you aren't being paid to do the journalism then you are getting paid to do something else, or you aren't getting paid at all, which sucks.
You may be greatly underappreciating how a large group of people, each contributing a small change, can manifest collective expertise far exceeding one or two hired experts. There is also far less bias in the final product.
Yes, it takes time and money. But it is not concentrated in a few individuals that are paid by someone. It is actually made up of thousands of small contributions, from people who know something.
I started this article back in 2005 I believe, while I was a math grad student in NYU. I went on to do other things besides math. The article is now much more expanded, each diagram improved several times, the Talk page discusses various things, all over the span of years with dozens of experts contributing.
I still like to come back and see that a tiny bit of the original language and page structure I put together has remained, but a lot of it is simply beyond what I knew at the time and certainly what I know now about it.