Is it reasonable to compare this article to a wikipedia article? The publishing time frame and the number of people involved are way different. Wikipedia isn't intended to be a source for current events. It isn't journalism.
Maybe more importantly, is Wikpedia really an objective or fair look at an issue? For sandals sure, but look up a controversial event page and I bet things start to seem more questionable. That's a point where the reputation of a newspaper is an advantage over Wikpedia because at wikipedia, each page, each sentence can have a different author with a different viewpoint or agenda.
Is the author as important as the publication itself? The editors are the ones making final decisions on things. For example, The Economist doesn't even use bylines. Journalists see themselves as researchers more than authors. The role of the "Author" if there is one is the editor.
An exhuastively cited and sourced article is difficult to read. The narrative is easily lost, and the source content is skipped over by most readers. And you still need to spend a lot of time combing through the source matter for it to be a meaningful improvement over an unsourced article
Last, journalists rely on an idea of common knowledge. They aren't going to provide sourcing on a commmonly reported facts like "stingray-like devices have been found near the whitehouse". That isn't as true in academia where citations probably would be used for that type of fact.
Overall, I'm not unsimpathetic to what you and OP are saying, I think with the internet news media could link articles and sources together better for easier validation.
However, the idea that this type of stuff can eliminate the need for a high level of engagement with the news, critical thinking skills, I don't agree with.
which led me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Hong_Kong_protests
Its sources are the very articles that are being criticized in this thread.
Wikipedia isn't a news gathering organization. It aggregates information collected by others.
But if you want to see an example of "opinionated" people ruining wikipedia, just look at the pages about specific philosophy topics and compare them to the SEP. - On wikipedia a self-learned person is worth as much as an expert, and might be able to push his opinion into the article through sheer stubbornness.
Jumping to this article however I lose 80% of that. This article is light on that data and metadata. I can't tell much about the author (I can see his last 5 articles though) and I certainly can't tell what is primary research or not. Did this journalist see the 'cell-phone surveillance devices'? Is he working off a press release? Are there challenges to this narrative viewpoint? Is this written more out of a sense of entertainment or is there an effort being made not to embellish facts?
I'm going to guess that GP meant 'Citation needed' in a slightly broader sense than just name-the-source. There is a whole culture of open metadata and transparency that has grown up in the last two decades that is simply better than journalism. Wikipedia is trustworthy because the slightest suspicion can be investigated. It is frustrating to think that we are going to rely on journalism for political information when the articles are simply devoid of political context in the sense that is freely available on Wikipedia.