Comment by aeturnum

One thing that makes this worse is the collapse of local information economies. Papers can no longer make money by acting as pay-to-post message boards for the communities they serve. Instead, the best way to make money is to convince people from outside your region to use your organization for their news needs. So now every paper writes news for a national audience and what determines the financial health of the paper is how effectively it can attract readers that aren't from its area.