[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I don't think that's the core problem. If it were, then the decline of news would correlate very closely to newspapers' fumbling of the transition to online/internet.

But the decline starts much earlier in the 1980s/1990s with consolidation, infotainment newsfluff, disappearance of dailies in major cities. I can summarize in a single word, "Ganett".