That's true, and perhaps reflective of the fact that the modern essayist/journalist is one who has been solely an essayist/journalist in comparison, perhaps, to someone like George Orwell who was a policeman, dishwasher[1], and tutor among various other things.

I recall someone on the Internet[0] lamenting this change in writers in general, where their input material is other textual content and is not particularly influenced by a first-person encounter with reality. That's not guaranteed to produce a mushy result but often creates a work with an inauthenticity that disengages readers without an identical background.

Fair point on the other.

0: Perhaps classical oil-painter Kendric Tonn? Perhaps Paul Graham?

1: Amusingly, before his most famous works I'd read, as a young student, The Sporting Spirit (clever one), and Down and Out in Paris and London (more relevant to this conversation. A Western student would doubtless find it funny - since Orwell is best known here for 1984 and Animal Farm - that I didn't know he's The Dystopian Sci-Fi Guy