In my anecdotal experience, journalism goes along with the detractors and naysayers: It's an archaic industry from a past era, they're mostly ineffective, social media makes it mostly irrelevant, journalistic principles aren't really valued, hard news isn't valued, not many will ever read it and the audience won't come back, it's more for comfort and entertainment, don't challenge people too much, etc.
Imagine a blogger who, for their post, flew to the location of whatever they were talking about and saw it for themself. Interviewed dozens of people with direct experience, including the people directly affected, the people who did whatever happened, the local leaders, people on all sides. Found and read actual documentary evidence. Combined that all in a blog post and then ran it by several other people for editing, verification, ensuring nothing exceeded the evidence, etc. That would be an amazing - an almost unheard of - blogger and blog post.
That's everyday professional journalism. You can get it pretty cheaply.
They just don't market themselves. They don't believe in themselves. Someone told them that they are outdated and they believe it: Look at the NY Times front page, still trying to look like an actual old newspaper. Still with a banner at the top like the newspaper, with a typeface that was impressive in the era of metal type (what do younger who never saw the metal type output think? My guess: 'that's something old, for old people, before my time.'). Still mostly black-and-white and text (print!), with multimedia a very secondary extra rather than a normal, first-class part of the reports - articles with significant multimedia are special events done (afaik) by a special staff! Even lone bloggers can do better, and the NY Times has far more resources.
When is the last time you saw someone passionate about what is a truly noble, sometimes heroic profession? When was the last time someone was talking about how they were going to make it better than ever? How they were going to change the world? By being swept along by the zeitgeist rather than standing up and defining it and themselves, they are killing another essential institution (what institution has risen to this moment?).