To some extent, proper journalism, especially investigative journalism, was always a sort of loss-making luxury even for traditional media. You don’t want your ad beside the story breaking Watergate, because people might associate you with Watergate. You want it with the fluff; sports or gossip or soft local news or whatever depending on demographic.

The main change is that web media seems far more comfortable than traditional with being _just_ fluff, so the journalism is increasingly endangered.