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Internet journalism wasn't "fine".Respectfully disagree, though we most certainly have different definitions. To me journalism does not only encompass the professional journalists but all kinds of random people who feel the need to film something and post it in Twitter with 2 lines of descriptive text. In that regard, and even before Twitter was a thing, internet always found a way to report things to the population. So IMO even if most outlets go out of business, the world would barely notice.
> Most "news" is basically just filler
That we fully agree on.
> Many internet sites do die all the time. New ones spring up all the time...
And this is absolutely fine. Indicates a relatively healthy system.
> ...but it seems to be the good ones that actually die and the garbage that continues to accrue
Agreed as well, but IMO what we are starting to observe -- news sites getting more and more annoying and/or using more and more obnoxious tracking in the hopes of cashing out through selling of personal data -- is the self-correction of the system at work. Namely natural selection. I have zero sympathy for people who feel the need to use shady practices to survive; maybe their business is not that valuable and they refuse to see it. That's normal, everybody will fight for the sweet dollars -- plus the humans at large resist change in general -- but none of us should care if it's hard for them to survive as a business or not.
As an additional point, I don't think that most people should be paid to write at all. As you pointed out, most writings are garbage anyway.
> The reason that clickbait works is because it understand human psychology. I think that says more about humans than people realize.
Absolutely. This will not change anytime soon. Maybe centuries down the road. The average human being is not very bright and that's the sad reality.