This is nothing new. Journalists were cribbing from blogs and Reddit before social media, and from usenet before then (although the latter to a lesser degree).

This is nothing new. Journalists were cribbing from blogs and Reddit before social media, and from usenet before then (although the latter to a lesser degree). Agree with your statement of this being a symptom of trimmed budgets and the 24hr news cycle. The push for free news on the internet may have also contributed.