I've been noticing the same thing, and with all of Paul's very good caveats included, here's my theory:

There are a lot fewer working journalists than when the Internet began. Because of the Internet. (And a lot of other things, too, but let's just keep it simple this early in the morning.)

So: If you disrupt the livelihoods of the best creators of urgent, original content, then until something replaces them you are left with a giant content-sharing machine without as much interesting, non-derivative stuff to share.