The dirty secret is that the news media needs archive.today in order to function. Anyone writing an article about subject Y needs to know what every paper wrote about it. Back in the 00's it got out that you could log into almost any newspaper web site with "media/media", something that got clamped down on when it got out.

You'd think The New York Times could afford to get a subscription to other newspapers for their reporters but there is no way they could stoop so low as to admit that they're dependent on or equal to them in in any way. Most smaller papers are such marginal operations that they couldn't afford it even for writers who are on the paywall. It's more ramshackle than you think since even a lot of New York Times articles are written by freelancers who have no real connection with the organization and it's even more true for all the papers that are hanging on a shoestring.

If archive.today didn't exist they'd have to make one.

Or create a deeper underground where the masses do not get involved?

There’s no real way to tell if the content you share today will be paywalled tomorrow.