Not to put pre-1990s journalism on some sort of a pedestal but people basically stopped paying first because their only free option previously was the evening news.
We stopped paying first. As we got more comfortable over the past few decades, we wanted the news to do our bidding and confirm our prejudices. Because you can't please everyone, they failed, and so we stopped paying. Now all we get is corporate PR and AI-generated clickbait like this. It's a pay-to-play world.
I'd pay for a good, reliable news source, but I can't find one at all, and I don't pay.