Having once been a paper sales man and in the forest products industry for 35 years - and speaking on raw material costs not the state of media - what killed the US newsprint industry was knee jerk environmentalism that prevented our paper industry from modernizing and growing to compete against countries that had little or no environmental standards. This is why Canada has newsprint to sell and we do not.
Kudos for your recognition of the fact that Canada has long delivered snotty lectures to us about environmentalism while continuing to pollute their own country at-will.
I thought the US paper industry was getting away from newsprint in favor of liner board.