Yes, but there are barely any of this type of journalist anymore, and barely any outlets for them to be published in.
What there are are a lot of connected people who went from elite schools to exclusive unpaid internships, jobs in prestige nonprofit PR departments, and consulting firms, then to national outlets at very high salaries. Their coworkers are ex-politicians and campaign flacks, and people who worked at massive hedge funds and investment banks, who decided that they preferred punditry and socializing to their jobs.
The people you're talking about are bloggers/substack people now, and are generally denigrated by mainstream outlets.
Oh, you mean other than about 90% of journalists in America.
I worked around multiple newsrooms. It's clear that you have not.
There is a very big world outside of the corner of the internet that you live in. And it still exists despite the internet trying to kill it off. Most "hometown" papers still exist. Go find some of them. Read them. What you'll see is that most of them are staffed by about 5-6 people, a few freelancers, and then a bunch of bylines that are simply the name of the paper, because they don't want you to realize how short-staffed they are (these are also written by those same journalists and editors).
That's the reality of the modern newsroom for the VAST majority of news outlets in the US.
What there are are a lot of connected people who went from elite schools to exclusive unpaid internships, jobs in prestige nonprofit PR departments, and consulting firms, then to national outlets at very high salaries. Their coworkers are ex-politicians and campaign flacks, and people who worked at massive hedge funds and investment banks, who decided that they preferred punditry and socializing to their jobs.
The people you're talking about are bloggers/substack people now, and are generally denigrated by mainstream outlets.