Not really. There has been a long tradition of mostly shit quality journalism available for "free", along with some refurbished agency reporting, true. However,

Not really. There has been a long tradition of mostly shit quality journalism available for "free", along with some refurbished agency reporting, true. However, the quality journalism for the most part was still paid, as in buy a paper or magazine or a subscription, if you want reliable and regular in depth journalistic reporting and/or investigation (with some exceptions, of course). That really only shifted when publishers en masse put stuff on the web for "free", financed by ads.