Personally, I still believe that investigative journalism has a lot of value, but no way to charge top dollars for that value.
It is the bad reporting that should die - we shouldn't tie it to any particular format.
Other than the Economist, I'm not aware of any news sources that have aimed for that type of trustworthiness as a selling point. I'd like to hear about any news sources everyone here trusts, not blindly trusts like my father-in-law trusts Fox News but empirically trustworthy fact-driven news.
You're looking for The Christian Science Monitor. Their whole reason for being is avoiding sensationalist reporting (biased reporting, I'd argue, is impossible to avoid completely). They go so far as to not use any of the wire services, so that biases don't creep in there, and use their own on-the-ground reporters instead.
What's tragic is that news sources like that are being plowed under along with the Fox Newses of the world with everyone's decision that "eh, blogs are just as good."
(edit: Well that's embarrassing. Apparently HTML markup doesn't work here.)
As far as sensationalism and lack of depth, I'm not sure they can really be faulted.
I use NPR as a counter-argument to saying that good content will find a way to make lots of money. Show me how because I don't see it.
Legitimate journalism does have value. But today the big media outlets serve up sugary teeth rotting cereal and try to pass it off as "part of this complete breakfast". If the MSM concentrated on delivering serious journalism they may be in a better position today. Instead they concentrate on rehashing rumor, regurgitating press releases and wire reports, and making sure everyone gets their fill of marmaduke and beatle bailey. For some reason, this latter strategy is failing them in a world of ubiquitous access to information.