Pretty much, yeah; it was thanks to Wikileaks and the technologies they pushed that made media implement ways to anonymously report things to them. If I recall correctly, that's what Assange had to teach the journalists at the time.
Read a book about the history of Wikileaks, and you'll find out.
Independent investigative journalism was, and is, in a sorry state.
Even most of the best investigative journalists operating today defend a two tier system, where you have to trust them. You don't get access to their source documents.
For instance the notorious Hunter Biden laptop, was never published. Not even by the media hawking it. Only supposed excerpts from it have been published.
The same is true for ICIJ releases like the Panama Papers. Some people have access. You don't.
Assange was determined to fight that, to provide to the public the source material journalists use, so that you don't have to trust him (or anyone) that they're being selective, or slipping in their own details.
Wikileaks was also the first anonymous submission platform, by many years.
James Dolan and Aaron Swartz, who worked at the second one, are both dead by suicide. The latter after harsh persecution by the US government. It's likely that one or both of them earlier secretly worked with Wikileaks' submission system.
