I don't think anyone argues that journalism is in a healthy place today, but what is the alternative? The problem is that real news costs real money to produce. Newspapers could be not-for-profit but their reporters would still need a salary to do their jobs.
Democracy Now Productions, the independent nonprofit
organization which produces Democracy Now!, is funded
entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers,
and foundations such as the Ford Foundation,[failed
verification] Lannan Foundation, J.M. Kaplan Fund,[4]
[5][6][unreliable source?] and does not accept
advertisers, corporate underwriting or government
funding.[7]
The remark from Bill Clinton is a fun bit:
Clinton defended his administration's policies and charged
Goodman with being "hostile and combative".[51]
While your question isn't wrong, how is that fundamentally different from how things were before? How can news be free if it relies upon paying readership for its sustained production?
There was a brief golden age of newspapers that went away with industrialization. It hasn't been Ben Franklin's game for a long time and I think people need to think about what that has meant and will mean.
It's my impression that early in Benjamin Franklin's publishing career he published newspapers so he could put ads in them to sell more books. And that later in his publishing career, he used his newspapers more to promote his revolutionary agenda. The man wasn't a journalist.
