The quality of journalism has definitely gone down, which probably reflects the diminished advertising revenue and therefore the diminished ability of newspapers (and online "news sources") to pay their writers a decent wage. Other than a few papers like the NYT, most online writing I see is clearly written under time or budgetary constraints, and a lot of the writing is scarcely one notch above Mashable/Buzzfeed.
But as I like to say - most people with the writing/analytical skills required to be good journalists are already gainfully employed as consultants and lawyers. Money talks.