My point is that the platforms haven’t replaced something important that the newspapers were doing, which came not from a profit motive but from a motive of jou

My point is that the platforms haven’t replaced something important that the newspapers were doing, which came not from a profit motive but from a motive of journalistic duty. There is not much money to be made in raising awareness of how local government works. But it’s important for society. Your examples are cases where global brands met the need exactly because the free market works well in those cases. Just because there isn’t a lot market demand for information about local state legislatures doesn’t mean that this information is not important or valuable to collect and report. It’s pretty important to keep local government accountable.