I'm 49; and i dunno about "ended". Its no longer required to attend a physical place to "cover a story," but I'm sure that bar is still there at every big event.
You're confusing (as so many people do, alas) the jobs of "reporter" and "journalist".
The former is a job where you are required to attend a physical place to cover a story, required to talk to people, required to gather facts. Of course, you might do all of these badly, you might even lie about having done them, but that's the structure of the job.
The latter is a job whose name comes from the practice of writing "journals", and has little, if anything to do with reporting. Journalists do not "cover stories", they write about things that are happening, informed by the work of reporters, but also other folk: researchers, essayists (an even less-connected-to-the-story form or journalism), lobbyists, politicians, and yes, their neighbors. They've been around for at least 350 years in European-linked cultures, and probably a lot longer than that if you take a broader view.
My understanding (based on some podcasts I’ve heard on) is that journalism has developed journalists not being by in a physical place except at very big events is due to newspapers closing/lack of money. There simply isn’t enough funding to have a well-considered reporter report on a specific subject or region where they then are in a place and regional education to then comment when something major happens. Now national newspapers ship reporters out to major events who simply don’t have the know-how of on the ground context and therefore can come away with drastically different conclusions than the people who actually live there.
It's been replaced with various private whatsapp groups. A surprisingly large amount of UK politics coverage is Laura K and Robert Peston reading out messages they have been sent by various leakers.
I am living near a medium sized city in Germany; here journalists from the local newspaper are very present at events, may they be cultural or political. A few days ago an incident made international headlines. After a few hours the place where the incident happend was full of journalists.
Just curious, how old are you and what year do you believe this “used to be” ended?
I’m 40 and my guess is that this time is 25+ years gone by?