Journalists are often judged based on their public output. You get bylines on published articles, and you can use those to apply for jobs. There's not much emphasis on secrecy because the goal of a news outlet is to be read by as many people as possible.
Being unable to provide examples of your work is a career-killer if everyone else can point to stuff they wrote. Preserving your work isn't altruistic, it's required.
It's a very different environment compared to programming, because oftentimes the source code is valuable because it's a secret. Employees taking source code is dangerous because competitors can copy it; obviously that's bad for one's career.
The analogy doesn't work here because the cost/benefits of taking legal action are different.