1. Rewording press releases from industry/government. The actual writers of this content are being paid by industry/government, and the content itself is essentially an ad.

2. Soap opera designed to provoke fear or controversy, both "political" and not (see #1)

3. Emotional tourism fluff pieces to steal attention (see my original comment)

4. Pumping the latest startup fad (see #1)

5. Self-important circle jerks about the 'knowledge economy' and other superiority-assured deck chair distractions on the USSG (see #1)

6. Rewording of actual information that was not created by a journalist to be "more accessible", with the end result being a distorted oversimplification. This is essentially a subcase of #3 where the emotion is superficial "understanding".

7. Direct copying ("excerpts") of other 'professional journalism' with a link back, ad infinitum.

So no, I'm not terribly worried about losing something we don't actually have.

The occasional story that has genuine public interest (eg the hard facts about NSA) would be reported by concerned parties anyway. I doubt many of those ad views are paying the actual reporter, Snowden, who acted out of moral imperative. And while I'm happy the journalist middlemen are working to keep public attention on this subject, this is only necessary from being in a zero sum game with the above. These middlemen are actually delaying, redacting, and muddling specific technical facts on the current state of NSA's malevolence that would be quite nice for us to know.