Arguably, local papers failed because local businesses in smaller cities and towns got hollowed out by big box stores and there was no ad revenue coming from co

Arguably, local papers failed because local businesses in smaller cities and towns got hollowed out by big box stores and there was no ad revenue coming from corporate HQ to support the papers. It's not the newspapers that were broken, it's the regional economies of towns that are bedroom communities with fewer locally owned businesses. It's globalization, basically. A news organization is fundamentally just a political actor that needs patronage to keep convincing people to maintain patronage, where a media business that uses news requires a local advertising market that is a function of the local-ness of the economy. Maybe the real future of news is a kind of secular community church supported by donations and tithes or wealthy patrons, which people use for topical moral lessons and sermons, and as a community hub. Substack, The Intercept, NPR, and to some extent Quillette, are like that. Towns will have "news pastors," and media companies will install people in remote outposts to instill their culture in the populace. The conceit of journalists who think they are a 5th estate of society and somehow necessary is completely divorced from the economics of what made their trade viable. Journalism is advertising to sell advertising. It's the carnival barker or pamphleteer who brings in rubes to clip coupons and view ads. Just because very-serious news is the fancy freakshow doesn't change its economics. The media business is about hiring people to make spectacles of themselves and selling advertising on it. (hence social media dominated) Without relevant regional advertisers, there is no business. Paid/subscription content (like Substack) is an oddly unique business model in that it's a super premium direct product that is not subsidized by advertising. It's not actually a media business but we think it is because it hawks writing, but it's really more like an art/spiritual patronage broker than a media business.