Newsrooms are completely different from investigative digging into stuff.
I am in UK and look at my local papers - the number of stories is massively down and the report numbers are much smaller. One reporter now for several London boroughs when there used to be several for one.
Who is looking at local government now?
Yes, news orgs could have adapted faster, but most privately held papers were in the black. Only when the debts and insane growth expectations were added were they dying.
Private equity is ruining modern democratic institutions.
The issue is lack of advertising revenue. No local classified adds or local firms. All gone to Facebook.
There's plenty of funding for and to reporters who aren't trying to discover the truth but instead manufacture it.
Is there a reason we think they persist?
It's not that "the media" has gotten worse at their jobs. Rather, there simply a lot less funding for reporters. The hit in funding has become much worse in local reporting -- especially local newspapers. However, if this is viewed as a training ground for the few large national/international news organizations, it's easy to see how this has a profound impact for even the large and well funded publications.
There's simply much less reporting happening than their used to be, and it's a real problem.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/07/13/u-s-newsroo...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/626459/number-employees-....