[Mezzie]

Disagree with blaming the general public. I'm a librarian-programmer who's dabbled in writing and done some political comms work, though never journalism.

You're right about the lack of financial ability for writing to keep one afloat financially (unless you're willing to do sketchy work, of course), but that's more a tragedy of the attention economy commons than the fault of the average news consumer. The business divisions of publications realized they could make as much money without paying their journalists as much; why wouldn't they do that? The answer, of course, is because if every outlet turns into a tabloid that it turns out that's bad for society, but no outlet is going to give up the attention economy/data $$$ in exchange for a healthier society because their competitors are still playing the game and they're not going to disadvantage themselves.

Journalists and publications are also not helping their case with trying to run so leanly (no editors, QA, fact-checking, etc.) that their work is no longer worth paying for for those of us who ARE be willing to pay for decent journalism.

The incentives of both journalists and their bosses no longer match each other, and in addition both sets of incentives also don't match what society requires.