I will offer this analysis.
First, papers of a major nature...got a funny idea to escalate their benefits packages and salary of their top reporters....this is especially true in New York, Boston, Chicago, LA, Seattle, Denver, Miami, Dallas, and St Louis. This started in the 1980s...and everyone was convinced to pay a growing rate to reporters who barely contributed anything each week.
Then the crowd that they did keep...felt their job was to slam anything that was non-Democratic in nature. So stories were rigged. The subscribers...were unhappy and each month...a couple just gave up on reading the paper.
So as the papers were spiraling into debt in the 2000-2005 era...naturally, they went to the bank and asked for credit. They figured it was a low period.
By 2008...they patted each other on the back and but then the bank came calling...and the debt was way more than what was acceptable.
So papers failed.
My hometown paper is surviving...but it’s designed for a town of 40,000 and they never had that much in national news...doing mostly local and state news...and mostly balanced.
Up the road a piece...is the Nashville paper....which is in serious trouble...and tried hard to be a regional paper and a heavy player of democratic issues. They’ve already laid people off and trimmed back on the budget. The guys in charge? They don’t want to admit that subscribers left and won’t come back....but they can’t attract anyone to buy a daily copy. So, it’s a sad story...which won’t correct itself and certainly won’t get better.
Eventually...the paper will be worthless...and some smart conservative guy will waltz in with a million, and buy the paper dirt cheap...then transform it.
Big city papers lost circulation when the productive in those cities moved out to the suburbs. Newspaper owners looked at what they had left, the poor, uneducated, recent arrivals, etc., and trimmed their sails to reflect the new audience. The new audience has little need for daily news.