The real threat to local news is national/international news. An organization selling a story to the entire anglosphere has an advantage over an organization

The real threat to local news is national/international news. An organization selling a story to the entire anglosphere has an advantage over an organization trying to sell a story to just one town or country. Both stories cost about the same to write and distribute, but the story with [manufactured] international appeal has massively more earning potential. So newspapers with a focus on national news (NYTimes, WaPo) end up killing the local newspapers even in big cities like Chicago. And the same dynamic applies internationally; the organization which is best at manufacturing international interest for their stories will have an advantage over any organization that focuses on national news with national interest. If the intention is to get Canadians to focus more on local news, making Facebook pay to link to local news is completely backwards. Facebook will (and apparently has) simply transition to showing cheap international news. Instead, Canada should be making Facebook pay when linking to foreign news, or paying Facebook when linking to local news.