As a counter-argument, maybe the thing people are willing to pay for is the insights of a single individual (like https://www.gwern.net/ https://www.gwern.net/

As a counter-argument, maybe the thing people are willing to pay for is the insights of a single individual (like https://www.gwern.net/ https://www.gwern.net/ which makes a decent chunk of money from patreon), not the entire organization (such as a news paper?) There's always going to be people who're interested in insightful, well researched articles and opinions. Isn't a part of the problem connecting these people, to the actual individuals doing posting in a more transparent way than a news-paper? Having this as the default would pose problems of it's own, and make some of the deeper journalism requiring months/years to complete more difficult though.