The alternative, is to "do your own research" yes. No matter how much they sneer at it, no matter how many people who say they do it suck at it. You have to put in work if you want to be well-informed about anything.

There doesn't have to be an alternative to Wikipedia as a short-cut to being well informed on contentious topics, because there isn't a short cut, and the sooner people realize, the better.

You can still use Wikipedia for non-contentious topics, if you wish. I do, sometimes. I'm still not going to invest into it though - I'm way too disgusted at the Wikipedia sausage making process for that. That process is made for the contentious topics, it poisons the non-contentious topics, and it doesn't even work well for the contentious topics.