... is that there is no such thing; and furthermore, that such a thing is not possible.
Leaving aside the more obvious issues of financing and of hunting and hiring competent people, your Journalist Joe must find a public for his texts. As soon as Joe has a following of sorts, that is, people consistently reading his intellectual products, then Joe becomes a so-called influencer and his influencin' is then necessarily a political act1. As soon as his readership grows to a significant number relative to some particular population, e.g. the set of people speaking the same language, Joe will start drawing attention to himself, which will necessarily identify him with respect to some adversary or another on the political scene. This state of affairs is perhaps escapable in some fairyland where sheep and wolves go out drinking schnapps while making fun of the shepherd's dog; but only there and there alone.
This so-called "problem" is not limited to journalism either. Whether you're making some high-tech piece of software or selling trinkets by the road, you are only able to sell your wares under the watchful eye of some authority or another -- you need some "back", as they say in the hood. Whether said authority is a state, some non-statal organization or a very powerful individual is not really relevant nor is it interesting with respect to this discussion. The same feudal principle applies whether the political environment you inhabit is nominally democratic, communist or whatever other modernist mumbo-jumbo you've been indoctrinated with these past few centuries. This, incidentally, is also why any such pretense to independence may be merely attempted for a short while given ample resources; but at the end of the day...
At the end of the day, the problem is yours alone to bear, since that which you so impudently call a "problem" is merely the natural state of things.
Almost three years have passed since I wrote this, and with them, the so-called activity of "journalism" has continued its slow march down the proverbial drain. Just to take a quick look: BuzzFeed News is gone, Vice Media is (thankfully) kaputt, and meanwhile CNN, BBC et al. aren't faring well at all.
This only goes to show that beyond the usual propaganda to tell the common man what he ought and oughtn't think about things and matters, journalism has pretty much run its course. As far as civil matters are concerned, Twitter and the likes are just as good as any other medium; while from a military point of view the fog of war is so thick that not even the proverbial machete helps any. When all is said and done, we have always been at war with Eastasia.