[Freak_NL]

Nuance and variety. A (quality) newspaper has its own signature, and presents you with a variety of articles (including news, investigative journalism, and op/ed articles). Some of these will be very popular, some of these will only interest a subset of the readers. Sometimes an article about something completely unfamiliar to you will turn out quite interesting. That is the serendipitous effect you get with a newspaper — although you do apply some form of filter by choosing newspaper X over newspaper Y.

If only economic concerns where a factor in determining what to write about, you would end up with a few insightful articles about widely appealing topics widely shared, but fewer high quality articles about niche topics.

A newspaper for me is a convenient shorthand for “a group of journalists and columnists who write good quality articles”. I would hate to have to hunt down individual articles and authors! The risk of getting locked up in my own private filter bubble is way too high.

I have a subscription to a newspaper I read daily, but sometimes I want to read an article from another (Dutch) newspaper. That is when Blendle is really useful (Blendle is a Dutch company, and all major Dutch newspapers make their articles available there).

The situation may be bleaker in the US. I am not overly familiar with US newspapers.