The problem, as I see it, isn't just that the journalists can't read it, but that their audience don't care about it. The journalists are supposed to serve as intermediaries between the two, but frequently, proper journalism on the story would fail to excite the reader. The vast majority of science is important to other scientists, but science that actually matters even to scientifically-interested readers is not that large.
The readers want more content that interests them, and science fails to provide it. No journalist could bridge the gap between the dull progress of science and the reader's real interest level. The market for "mind-blowing" science -- sweeping technological and philosophical advances -- is far greater than the market for incremental improvements and novel but minor insights.
The niche does exist. I find it filled fairly well by Science News, which has about a dozen pages of real science news every two weeks. I only just got an issue about the black hole photo, which was fine with me: real discoveries are still true and important two weeks later. But most readers would find every other article in that issue terminally dull.
I don't know how to fix that other than to ignore any science "journalism" that comes out more frequently than that. It exists, and I ignore it. It doesn't contribute anything: it's peddling effectively-fictional stories to readers who want sci-fi. I think that the finest science writing promoted well might attract marginally more eyeballs than it currently gets, but most readers simply don't actually care about science, and it's not something journalists can fix.