When the two-paper cities began becoming one paper cities I thought a good idea would be for the second paper to either shrink or even become a tabloid. They might have found a niche instead of trying to be a clone of the bigger paper.
Imagine a thinner paper with a conservative editorial page focusing mostly on local news and issues with a small staff. Sort of like a small town daily in a big city, it’s circulation wouldn’t have to be nearly as big as the other to stay afloat.
But they all wanted to be the NY Times or Wash Post.
There is still this body of thought out there that if a newspaper becomes “local” only, they can actually turn a profit.
After watching the “local” papers up close for over three years and sitting next to their “reporters” in town meetings, I can tell you they are not faring much better than the big metro papers.
The ONLY thing that’s keeping the local weeklies and small town dailies from folding is the money they get from government in the form of legal ads. Which is a direct subsidy, in this day and time of the internet and government websites.
Take that away from them, and they dry up and blow away.