It's not just that distribution is free, it's that newspapers lost their monopoly on much of their content with the advent of the internet. Classifieds? Craigsl

It's not just that distribution is free, it's that newspapers lost their monopoly on much of their content with the advent of the internet. Classifieds? Craigslist/Angie's List will serve you better results. Comics? Reddit's r/all has better memes. Sports/world news? A local paper can't possibly compete with the larger organizations in terms of coverage and quality. There's just not much left that local papers are specifically the best at (I think Cuban calls it a 'core competency'). I think there's definitely a market for re-calibrating reader expectations by rebranding from being a newspaper to being a brochure or pamphlet.