Ok I see this take a LOT and I think we all need to reckon with how "the Internet" might not have "decimated local journalism" without readers...deciding not to read it when there were more alternatives? https://twitter.com/MuseZack/status/962560673744998400 …
The crisis in local journalism stems from a precipitous drop in revenue. This happened not because people stopped reading, but because the readership moved online, where all of the ad revenue is effectively captured by Google and Facebook.
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I don't think there was ever an avid readership for coverage of zoning meetings, but local papers saw it as part of their mission to cover this stuff. Say what you will about local journalism, at least it's an ethos.
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Moving online meant surrendering complete control of advertising to the ad racket, heavily subsidized by speculators. Those same ads, and the huge amount of cruft they add to pages, also make reading local papers unappealing. So people read it on Facebook, revenue drops more
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Well, what I'd like to see to evaluate this is a graph of readership vs. a graph of revenue (for local papers specifically).
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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