[claudiulodro]

Towns where the newspaper has shut down have provably higher levels of excess spending and governmental waste & corruption:

> Cities where newspapers closed up shop saw increases in government costs as a result of the lack of scrutiny over local deals, say researchers who tracked the decline of local news outlets between 1996 and 2015.

> Disruptions in local news coverage are soon followed by higher long-term borrowing costs for cities. Costs for bonds can rise as much as 11 basis points after the closure of a local newspaper—a finding that can’t be attributed to other underlying economic conditions, the authors say. Those civic watchdogs make a difference to the bottom line.

> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-30/when-loca...

That seems like a pretty big downside.

[Camas]

That's a press release for an unpublished paper disguised as an article.