I don't know why the parent is being down-voted, it raises some valid points.

"Honestly? No. They're that thing my dad would buy on the weekends, read one page of, and then we'd use it for potato peels, lining the floor when painting rooms, and stuff like that."

I see no problem with not living in the time of centralised news. A quick history lesson. Newspapers are old forms of information dissemination, they do however offer a glimpse of a solution to some problems you describe, Not all.

News in the form of facts used to be collected by reporters, and journalists who would write up what they saw. The raw information would be passed to editors (subeditor in newspapers) to correct, then transcribe news into a house style fit for publishing. This is what we used to see in news. On the news-stand, the radio and to a lesser extent television.

The WWW removed this technical hurdle to publish news. Think about that. Some of the processes were technical requirements, others were there for accuracy. This resulted in (degrees) of quality news.

"By the time I was old enough to even consider reading newspapers, they had devolved into clickbait sensationalist garbage."

The money part is one problem. There are hints of what companies are trying. [0] The rivers of revenue from car sales, houses, jobs are gone. They had a monopoly and have now lost it. Journalism and news was always subsidised from these revenue streams. I don't know the answer to this.

Then there is the problem of where we get our information. The real problem now, is serious attempts to generate dis-information. Disinformation, distortion of news is not new. [2] At it's mildest it's the annoying advertising passed as news. What is going on in the Whitehouse is at the extreme end. [3] For most of us reading online we have to wade through the middle ground trying to work out what is worth reading. This is a job that could be tackled by humans trained in understanding and curating news and information, aided by smart algorythms. AI won't solve this problem (yet). It is too easy to game.

In the mean time, as Dave Winer suggests, invest carefully in your own personal news flows. [4]

reference

[0] "Ads, he said, “[are causing] increasing amounts of misinformation…and pressure to put out more content more cheaply — depth, originality, or quality be damned. It’s unsustainable and unsatisfying for producers and consumers alike….We need a new model.”"

https://thenextweb.com/opinion/2017/03/23/ev-williams-lost-g...

[1] "Since January I've been adding to a thread on how Bannon and Trump are building a disinformation validation network."

https://twitter.com/justinhendrix/status/844718202349371393

[2] If you read through the CIA reading room, search for Soviet disinformation and be surprised at the attempts to destabilise western democracy through fake news: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/search/site/soviet%2...

[3] "This is a thread about #RussiaGate and Paul Manafort's $10M/year contract to further the interests of Putin's government:" https://twitter.com/AndreaChalupa/status/844710804985393153

[4] "One of the most patriotic things you can do is to upgrade the quality and breadth of the news you read. Invest in your personal news flow." https://twitter.com/davewiner/status/844691778724859904