Bad News: Legacy media must compete against a choose-your-own-adventure reality.

News sites everywhere have seen traffic plummet in the past two years. That’s partly the fault of technology companies and their algorithmic changes, which have made people less likely to see or click on articles when using products like Google Search or Facebook.

Or maybe it is also the fault of news sites putting tracking and advertising to their users first or even selling them a subscription. You can't expect the same number of visitors if you want people to sign up for something as you got when access was free. Not to mention that even among sites with cookie banners news sites are among the worst offenders when it comes to dark patterns and number of companies they want to share your data with.

Is the press the bulwark against fascism, or is it ignored by a meaningful percentage of the country?

That seems like a false dichotomy in a world where Rupert Murdoch owned and other traditional media has been pushing fascism in several countries for decades now.

Traditional journalism operates with a different playbook, typically centered on strong ethical norms and a spirit of objectivity; the facts are meant to anchor the story, even where commentary is concerned.

The author of this article is caught up in some sort of self-delusion about the traditional media if they think that ever was a majority of journalists.

... which has produced genuine debates about whether traditional objectivity is possible or useful. Some audiences crave obvious resistance against the Republican regime.

Neutrality is not objectivity, when shit is genuinely just awful. Any objective reading of day-to-day events in The Idiot's regime amounted to screaming about how we just saw him commit another high crime out loud in public. Ambiguity was fucking scarce. Objectivity and professionalism in these circumstances would mean using The Idiot's given name, not calling his loyalty-driven autocracy a regime, and trying to politely phrase how everything he just said is factually wrong and clearly bigoted and also evidence for the prosecution.

If media wasn't influential, these bastards would not spend so much effort controlling it.

Also "centi" is a diminishing prefix. A centimeter is one one-hundredth of a meter. The Idiot is a "centibillionaire." Elmo has one hundred billion dollars.