I guess you mean the period in human civilization where there was widespread literacy but also a high cost of mass producing and distributing texts, assuming people with money to invest in reporters can't be stupid or misinformed.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/literate-and-illiterate-w... Depending on where you draw that line, that never really happened (I would call 'widespread' around 80%, which happened in 2000 but then there was already an internet, although it was a niche and playful version of what it is today).
Rather, this kind of thing seems to ebb and flow a bit. And right now it smells like low tide.
I feel like my generation (90s) is a lot better informed than almost any parent, let alone grandparent. But maybe that's too long a scale and you rather mean low tide on the span of the past handful of years, on which I don't really have an opinion / can't really say
People are more informed than ever before.
The past looks better only because it is a distorted view from a lack of information at that time.
Hot take: People don't read them as much because people don't read "news" to be informed in an unbiased manner, they read news to be entertained.
Pity that it's so difficult nowadays to be accurately informed about anything.