I agree that the quality spread among independent journalists (in the broad sense of the term) is far wider than among professional journalists, but one of the reasons journalism is in crisis it that the reporting and writing are consistently mediocre.

Part of the problem is that the journalism business model uses the value of eyeballs to advertisers as a proxy for writing quality, so editorial decisions are driven by what advertisers want, not what readers want.

Meanwhile, the advertising revenue pie is shrinking and news publications are forced to cannibalize themselves to cut costs, with the result that writing (and particularly manager-editing/copy-editing) get worse instead of better.