Local newspapers are dying. Here’s how we can save them

Despite being honored, all three newspapers have had to cut pay, or lay off or furlough workers, since the pandemic started. Unlike the case with many other businesses that are suffering now, however, COVID-19 isn’t the source of these papers’ problems; it has simply accelerated the great disruption in the news business that began at least two decades ago. (Many metropolitan newspapers saw circulation peak starting in the 1970s, but total ad revenue for the industry peaked in 2000.)

The causes of the disruption are many: changing reader habits; the migration of classified advertising to Craigslist and other internet services; the dominance Google and Facebook built over online advertising; and, not least, the slowness of legacy media organizations in adapting to the digital transformation in the production, consumption and distribution of news.

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