[ardy42]

> While this may have been an unfortunate reality in previous eras, today we can get much better information from researchers and practitioners.

I don't think that's actually true. It's probably most true with science reporting, but does anyone think reading the firehose of specialist research output is a practical alternative to journalism for a general reader? Filtering and summarization are important functions when dealing quantities of information larger than an individual can handle alone. IIRC, even specialist research groups have paper reading circles to filter research papers in their own fields.

Then there's everything else. For a lot of stuff, you'd just be wading through PR and rumor without much ability to dig past that. For some news topics, like foreign affairs for instance, I'm not even sure where you'd even find timely, raw information to replace journalism about it.