It made me laugh at first too… but then I realised that Qubes does work out of the box and it will protect its users much more than an out-of-the-box Mac or (God forbid!) Windows machine. You only need compatible hardware and realistic expectations.
Many of the headaches with QubesOS are self-inflicted, trying to tweak or install settings that are not really needed by a journalist. Those headaches appear for tech-savvy users.
I’d like to see Qubes installer offer an “out-of-the-box” VPN installation for the popular VPNs (Mullvad, Proton, Nord) and a decent “browser qube” ditching Firefox (Librewolf? Mullvad? Brave? all of the above?). Then Qubes will legitimately be journalist-friendly.