Comment by mrkurt

The local newspapers failed, yes. But that's normal. Had there been a healthy market for local news, they'd have been replaced.

What actually happened is that the revenue available to local news got consolidated. Classifieds and local ads got rolled up by Craigslist/Google/Facebook. None of these companies have an interest in local news.

There's not much of a fix for this. Until we come up with a better way to pay for local news, there's no choice the "newspaper industry" could have made to thrive. Fighting consolidation is a good idea, though, and might help a new model emerge.