Well, I'd say the biggest reason why I like them is summarization and curation. Without them, it would take way too much time for me to gather and understand what's happening. Seriously. As well, it would take too much time and effort to choose what to focus on. Now we can debate on whether they do that job well, but I'd warrant that they still do it better and more efficiently than I could myself, and same when compared to social media or discussion forums.
Like so many things, free press in general is being disintermediated, since "leaks" happen without it, outside of it, and many times despite its best efforts to ignore them.
Still, one can imagine there's value to the business of keeping the government accountable -- if the business gets done.
But in tech? What secrets are there to uncover? As this story shows, the only "secrets" left are those made up by the press to try and justify its existence.