This can be tricky because journald compression, but is this really that much different than a corrupted compressed log file, like that which logrotate produces

This can be tricky because journald compression, but is this really that much different than a corrupted compressed log file, like that which logrotate produces, in /var/log? If that is your concern, you can disable compression in the journald configuration so that the contents can be read with "strings" or similar tools.