There were some brief excellent years in the nascent days of the blogosphere where stories that CNN would miss (especially stories about marginalized groups) managed to get widespread attention and the compensation to journalists held up. But where we are today in terms of news compared to the 00s or 90s (even with all the retrospective knowledge about journalism catastrophes like NYT's coverage of the Iraq War) is so much fundamentally worse.

Journalism, if done correctly, is unprofitable - the times in American history it has thrived, imo, have been when journalists have been patronized by people willing to trade money for prestige. That could have happened with the WaPo but now it appears to be more convenient to have a mouthpiece even if it's obvious to everyone.

Organizations like NPR and the CBC that get government funding can survive a while, but inevitably an administration will come into power that will threaten them or outright deny their funding to the point of impotency. Still, given how cheap they are to us in terms of a national budget it feel like just diverting 5% of the DOD's unmarked funding to just throwing money at journalists with no strings attached would probably result in immense transparency and quality.