Craigslist was the first nail in the newspaper coffin. Classifieds and adverts ate a LOT of local money. And all of that went poof. CL cost $0 to post. Why would I pay $10 for a week advert?
All the aggregators grabbed news from everywhere, and paid 0 for it. It cost to make. And made nothing. Encouraged the closed/paywall web.
Ganett etm bought a LOT of local papers, and lowered quality as low as they could go. Inertia kept many older subscribers. I know 0 millrnial and younger subscribers.
NYT and other major papers are easy to sign up, and you basically have to die to get rid of. I would never recommend.
There's a lot of factors. Basically most journalists are going to the glue factory, like horses did with motor vehicles.
31 years in operation and you just ... close completely?
The long tail of 31 years of goodwill is worthless?
Why not turn it into a news aggregator site like yahoo news or something, at least?
ask.com closing was more along the lines of what I was talking about then. that bugs me that they don't still have any form of simple search or a news portal or anything.... just, "bye!".
Seems like a waste.