Journalists don't generally wake up in the morning and think about what to write about. They have contacts with directors and execs, managers, players, agents, club PR teams, etc. All stories start somewhere, which could be with a tip off or someone passing a press release, a telephone conversation or pre-written story. They'll usually amend it a bit to match their own style and that's what goes out. If they're helpful to certain people, they'll be rewarded with exclusives from time to time.
In the good old days pre-Abu Dhabi, the MEN used to get the stories the club wanted to see from the PR team every day. Whenever I saw a City story containing "...highly regarded Chief Executive Alistair Mackintosh...", it was a dead giveaway that it was reproduced virtually verbatim from a Tyrrell email. And the flip-side of course is that people use the press to release negative stories about their rivals. So it's a fair bet that if the same reporters are writing the same stories, they're getting it from someone hostile to the club.