This seems like a tautology.

Of course if you set the baseline expectation at Baudelaire’s or Balzac’s writings then it’s true that newspapers heralded an age of barely sentient readers consuming nonsense written by moronic and corrupt journalists.

Because the vast majority of the population, including those working for newspapers, are dumber and less virtuous relative to the 99.9th percentile of notable writers… by definition.

Edit: The real question is why would anyone set their expectations so high?