The one newspaper we had in our little town for years was owned by Gannett - a constant diet of leftwing columnists, support for big-spending school boards, endorsement of 'rat mayors and councilmen, etc. - until about four years ago some young local renagade started a competitive paper which he gave away free at first just to build readership - my daughter went to school with him and claims that he's "crazy", but by now he's built a paid following as big as the original paper and by using local talent and taking strong stands against a lot of what was going on in town, which it turns out a majority of the public disagreed with, he's helped elect an almost totally new and very cost-conscious school board as well as an all republican council and mayor - even got us written up in the Philly media as the town with the "dueling newspapers" - Gannett is not necessarily the end of the world, especially in small town America.....
There's been a lot of talk about a conservative paper getting started here(my county went 63% for Bush).