To consider financial incentives or any sort of funding is an affront to those affected by a serious matter that may warrant an investigation.

Yet people doing the investigation have to eat and if they are good at their jobs it's better that they do their job, full time, instead of having "investigative journalist" as a hobby in addition to their "normal" job

Your’re tiptoeing around the gravity of situations such as, “how some lawyers and doctors rigged a system to deny benefits to coal miners stricken with black lung disease, resulting in remedial legislative efforts.” [Pulitzer Prize winning investigation, 2014] I would hope that the people who are involved in uncovering actions like this don’t perceive their practice as a mere job or a hobby, relative to whether they’re paid for it.

In the scenario we’re discussing (a world without corporate media), people who truly care enough about events, plots and schemes that threaten the moral fiber, dignity, agency and safety of humanity will see to it that they’re uncovered. That is unless, all investigative journalists are frauds who are driven only by glory and gold.

What you’ve described would be “better”, sure. It would be “better” if it rained during a drought than if it didn’t. But what are people going to do in the meanwhile?

Is “corporate” media the only kind of media there is that can present the news either way?