Ten years ago, a report like this would have been greeted with something like "Detroit is in decline? In other shocking news, it's raining in Seattle." The vast

Ten years ago, a report like this would have been greeted with something like "Detroit is in decline? In other shocking news, it's raining in Seattle." The vast majority of people don't care about long, ongoing stories that they know the basic story of until there's some notable event that makes it news right now, which in this case is the bankruptcy. I would expect they've been reporting on the various aspects of the problem all along -- that's what local papers generally do year in and year out. It's just no one cared about consuming in one big report like this until it became a notable event.