So who is buying? Certainly not the bulk of the public in Seattle. There is always a small number who would subscribe or buy the paper on a daily basis if it were available, but they may no longer provide a sufficiently large demographic to support the assembly, printing, distribution and sale of the printed medium. Once the demographic dries up, so does the revenue from advertisers, the thing that keeps the print media alive.
Then the paper becomes nothing but a pamphlet, a throw-away to be distributed by low-paid part-time agents.
Once weaned away from the daily newspaper, the bulk of the public may never go back.
I think if you drew up a list of the top 100 papers in America today....and go back in 2012...it’ll be forty less. Towns of 20k to 70k residents can readily support a local paper, which aims its news at local events and topics. These larger national papers really don’t have a base of attached readers.