Like you said, that can be valuable, especially in politics, when one hopes they aid your messaging. But it’s not a moral or even practical imperative to keep up with journalism.
Imagine learning about sports through ESPN commentary and never actually watching a game.
A similar professional blindspot occurred when many engineers thought twitter would collapse when Elon fired all those people. Because they see twitter as a piece of software, not a brand and organization.
But why is there a cohort so unsure of their decisions they need support from others? Is this how we want people making decisions for the country?
One political faction/side knows a publication is favored by one of the two parties. It can use that fact to feed it false information, or truthful, and watch to see how it gets reported, and the reaction of that electorate.
You can make the case that they might be disingenuous or manipulative in sharing what they claim to be their opinions, or that their opinions reflect cultural indoctrination rather than professional assessment, etc -- and so you don't have to take their endorsements seriously.
But it's not a crazy idea that they have something valuable to share for all the time they spend very close to news and politics, and it's not bad to know what their big picture view of topics and people are as they write and select stories for the rest of the paper as it helps you contextualize them in their subjectivity.