Relatively few journalists are actually investigative reporters looking to discover scandals and other issues that would constitute holding governments/corporations to account. Typically when a scandal is revealed it is an insider reaching out to a journalist as a means of exposing the problem. Such as the 'deep throat' source for Watergate or Edward Snowdon for the NSA overreach. These are obviously very important for a democracy but newspapers need the 99% of people working on sports/gossip/crime/etc to pay the actual bills.