Yes, you are off here. Firstly because the US never has been and never will be much of a democracy, and secondly because shaming the constituency into voting has never and will never result in more votes.
Fewer people voting is not the cause of less democracy, it is a symptom of it. Some people have been losing faith in it, and why wouldn’t they, when grinding neoliberalism has slowly worsened their lives over the last ~45 years?
Practically no one bases choices off newspaper endorsements, so we don’t have to pretend they matter. Newspaper owners and their editors want us to care, because they want to feel relevant, important, and venerated. The reason this is big news is that the media love to talk about themselves.
But this is a good reminder that corporate media don’t work for us, they work for oligarchs and advertisers.