This isn't limited to journalism. Advertising-based business models are inherently toxic and completely reverse the incentives between the website and their users.
In a typical paid product, the provider provides a service to the users who are paying the provider for said service. In this case, the provider is incentivized to deliver the best version of that service so that users keep paying, whether it's great journalism with added value (a high-quality comments section would be a plus here) or software.
With advertising, this changes completely. Broadly speaking, the profits negatively correlate with how much value is delivered to the user. There is no incentive great journalism and moderate the comments section while you can churn out inflammatory clickbait and leave comments unmoderated - the latter will actually net you more profit because outraged people barking at each other in the comments is a great source of "engagement" which is what advertising-based business models profit from.
In a typical paid product, the provider provides a service to the users who are paying the provider for said service. In this case, the provider is incentivized to deliver the best version of that service so that users keep paying, whether it's great journalism with added value (a high-quality comments section would be a plus here) or software.
With advertising, this changes completely. Broadly speaking, the profits negatively correlate with how much value is delivered to the user. There is no incentive great journalism and moderate the comments section while you can churn out inflammatory clickbait and leave comments unmoderated - the latter will actually net you more profit because outraged people barking at each other in the comments is a great source of "engagement" which is what advertising-based business models profit from.