Not sure about that metaphor. I don't know much about the railroad's pricing but it seems to me what did them in was that the government decided to subsidize th

Not sure about that metaphor. I don't know much about the railroad's pricing but it seems to me what did them in was that the government decided to subsidize their competitor. The government poured trillions of dollars into highways and there just wasn't much the railroads could do. The railroad is actually more efficient than the road so it is a very bad metaphor for a paper newspaper. Of course that did not matter once the government started making roads and offering them for free to all car owners.