Pompous boring filler in the house style?[1] Yawn, no thanks. As you say, there are plenty of free outlets of information. What more explanation do you need?

“Quality journalism” has its price, and the market doesn’t want to pay for it.

Quality software has its price too, but the market prefers Linux. Wait, are you associating “free” with “low quality” or am I? Who can tell with quality these days. One thing’s for sure, it’s a difficult issue.

[1] The text equivalent of Charlie Brooker's "How to report the news" segment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI