[rcarr]

A counterpoint to this is that local news is actually proving to be profitable (at least in the UK) on substack [1]. My guess would be that traditional local papers were too slow to adapt to the internet and also assumed that they would just be able to translate their business model to the internet with little adjustments. This often leads to awful, ad ridden hell holes like this monstrosity:

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/

Try using that site for 2 minutes without it crashing or you rage quitting from the constant rearranging of the page as it finally loads content. Even if you can use it, have a look at the quality of the articles. Case in point:

https://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/range-c...

The ironic thing is that, whilst the publication is local, it is part of a national group that owns a large part of local media in the UK that all share the same underlying core site just with the names and posts changed to represent the local content. Subsequently a large part of the UK has to deal with this absolute shite for their local news. Hopefully Joshi Herrmann will continue to see success and his model will spread across the country.

[1] https://read.substack.com/p/the-active-voice-8-joshi-herrman...