Comment by donavanm

I dont believe your perception is accurate. I worked for Knight Ridder during this time, and print news was already a walking corpse. Cable/satellite news channels, and broadcast tv, and even radio before that had worn away the primacy of print. By the 2000s circulation had been dropping for decades. Local/regional newspapers were surviving on classifieds and local ad buys, which was eaten up by craigslist and ad exchanges generally.

At that point, 2000ish, there wasnt much newspaper journalism left to be sustained. Most US print news was gannett and knight ridder recycling AP/reuters wire stories. A handful of national/global mastheads could sustain real investigative reporters and foreign bureaus, for a little while.

Personally I dont see how (quality) “free to read” news persists. Quality and depth is the differentiation, and the consumer needs to pay for it. Id bet more on the bloomberg/the economist/stratfor models continuing in to the future.