With today's talks of "Fake News", investigative journalism, and clickbaiting, I heard today's current news situation is similar to that of the yellow journalism Era of the 1880s-1900s. So I'm curious, how valid is the comparison?
Specifically, what was journalism like during that time? How wide spread was low quality journalism? And how did US society move past it?
I covered the rise of popular journalism in the US (specifically in New York) in this period in an earlier thread which may answer at least part of your question. In addition, u/DBHT14 contributed a very useful discussion of the influence of yellow journalism on the Spanish-American War of 1898 here, and u/AshkenazeeYankee contributed thoughts on the decline of the yellow press here.
You might also be interested in a short article I wrote recently on the rise of "confessional" journalism in the US in the 1920s - a wildly popular and influential genre that was the brainchild of the remarkable Bernarr Macfadden, who was also largely responsible for the rise of bodybuilding in the States and played an important part in sparking interest in wholefood diets. It is available on my academia.edu page here. This type of journalism also bears some resemblance to modern "fake news" journalism, and can be seen, in some respects, as a precursor of it.
To address your final point, it is very possible to make the case that the US never "moved past" yellow journalism. It is possible to trace what you call "low quality" journalism via the confessional press of the 20s, the LA Confidential-style gossip press of the 50s and the supermarket tabloids of the 70s, 80s and 90s, to the fake news mills of the present day.