I don't wholly disagree with you, and in fact think you have a very good and thoughtful perspective (FWIW), but I do have some thoughts. I think there's too mu

I don't wholly disagree with you, and in fact think you have a very good and thoughtful perspective (FWIW), but I do have some thoughts. I think there's too much focus on advertising and corporate interests as the thing that undermines journalism. There's such a thing as to little focus, but right now there's too much focus. For example, I have seen people lionize particular doctors, or researchers, or climate scientists, or what-have-you, who hold contrarian opinions on particular subjects. Clearly those people, in the minds of those who lionize them, have fewer conflicts of interest than advertising-driven journalists or powerful government officials. The problem is that there are powerful motivations for people to lie or deceive that are equal in power to advertising money. Power through influence. Power through self-righteousness. For example: I've looked into various vaccine conspiracy theories that have been touted online, and some of them come from highly credentialed people, sometimes with excellent historical track records in medical fields, who none-the-less are playing fast and loose with the data, or drawing conclusions that cannot be backed by research. The people who tout those theories look to those originators, those highly credentialed people, and say, "Look, there's Dr. So and So, they aren't part of Big Pharma, so they must be on to something". Then I look into Dr. So and So's blog, and look at the research they're citing, realize they're misinterpreting, or exaggerating, or what-have-you. In short, they are deceiving the public. They aren't financially motivated to do so. So why do they do it? Well, there's plenty of reasons. A desire to be right. A desire to be relevant and respected. A desire to have an audience. I think these things are easily as powerful, and often more powerful, than advertising money held over a journalist at a large media company. And I see benefits to journalists working in groups with editorial control. I've seen great authors go astray in terms of quality when they start self publishing, or somehow become influential enough that they can shrug off their editors. I believe any journalist would be subject to the same forces of ego, influence, etc. If a journalist is making their money through Substack subscriptions, that may be even more of an existential threat than one faced by a journalist at the NYT, who can more readily absorb the financial hit of a story that goes nowhere. The subscribers, after all, now have expectations of what they will get from that journalist. Juicy stories -- at any cost?