There is no such thing as journalism in gaming unfortunately. There’s only third-party marketing.

But to further answer your question as to why the standards might have degraded even further, I blame the advent of internet. Whoever plays the least amount of time and writes fastest will have several hours of advantage in getting their article published. Back when gaming magazines were dominant, the dynamics were different because your article wasn’t published faster because you wrote faster.

Another part of the reason why internet degraded written articles is video reviews. Video reviews are a distinct format from written reviews, yet both tasks are given to the same writer in most publications. This will obviously result in decreased quality for both formats and pure writers who are not as good at editing/narrating videos might get pushed out.