All firms, are in competition.
Media firms must get attention to succeed.
There is more media than any human can consume in a life time.
Therefore, to succeed, you must be the media consumed, instead of someone else.
THis means you want to get peoples attention - at all costs.
This is sufficient to create the situation we have. You can always add some twist to the whole thing, but this is sufficient.
But that is a very narrow view. The New York Times could claim they have proof Trump is an Alien from outer space. For the day, they would win the attention of the world.
But the cost would be their credibility, which would lessen the share of attention they would receive on every day afterward.
So the NYT pursues a strategy of building a customer relationship. And trying to get as much sustained attention as they can over the course of a relationship. They don't purse getting attention AT ALL COSTS on each individual day, and neither should Facebook.
For anyone who thinks this isn't the case it isn't aware of the extent because the paper is paywalled so you can't see how had it is, page back to the debacle where the editorial staff were asking whether it was their job to question politicians' statements, or just "we report, you decide". A lot of people dropped their subscriptions because that's literally the only thing they were subscribing to the NYT for, and the editorial staff were announcing it didn't fit their profit model.
The only readers they have left, are ones who don't mind tuning in to get the DNC agenda for the day. More or less.
I got a free trial, and called to cancel it early (I had to call!), because it's just another tabloid. The only major news source I can stand to read anymore is maybe Reuters? I have to get my news from citizens who comb social media and investigate independently.
And where do you find these citizens? Twitter?
Over the past several decades, a huge number of news papers have gone out of print.
In its place there is an explosion of non-newspapers, which have lower barriers to quality, accuracy, and cost.
The NYT website, as you recall was the first website perhaps aside from the WSJ, which jumped the trend of going free in order to survive.
As an aside - Even prior to the internet, there was sweeping consolidation in the media world. Most news papers could not afford to stay in print or defeat takeovers.
There is an older theory on industrialized economies - that most media firms will eventually be taken over, and therefore be soft on their particular conglomerate and sister firms.