It appears unlikely that, as the general consensus seems to be, a group as diverse as all journalists world-wide would collectively be any more stupid than any

It appears unlikely that, as the general consensus seems to be, a group as diverse as all journalists world-wide would collectively be any more stupid than any other profession. So it may be unjust to call what happened to them "mistakes". There's no indication that an offline-only or paywalled distribution would have had better chances (the few that did were without exception rather special publications focusing on high-value niches). They were simply mauled by the same market forces that killed travel agencies or fax repairmen. Unfortunately, while we're all quite happy to book our own flights, journalism is still vital. Sure, news is cheap, you can get the same stuff everywhere. But if you trace it back to it's origin, you'll end up at the NYT or WP or the Guardian more often than not. There's simply no way that hobbyists could ever fill the void that would remain if any of the few high-quality publications were to fail.