[esun]

The future of newspapers is more local. Once they divest themselves of expensive presses, unions, and other legacy line items, the actual cost of producing a local news story is low.

There's a successful business in there, just a much smaller one. In many ways, it's a return to the start of newspapers.

[roel_v]

"The future of newspapers is more local."

Well, here in Europe you're empirically being shown wrong. Local newspapers disappear the first; first step is that they're bought by a larger entity, second step is the removal of local news from them (because too expensive to write up), third step is killing them. Then, after a large brand has killed several smaller ones, they get bought by a bigger entity or go bankrupt.

I'm not sure how you can say that producing a local news story is cheap. It's very expensive on a per-reader count (which is all that matter) because there are relatively few readers. If you write a national story, you can sell it to everybody in the country. If you write a local story, you can only sell it to a subset of those people. Writing about a bake off costs the same as writing about a political debate on a national topic. It's quite obvious that writing for a small audience is a lot harder to have a positive ROI than for a large audience.

[jeremymims]

Roel, this path has already happened in the United States. In fact, we're in yet another round of consolidation where private equity groups are purchasing large stakes in the largest newspaper companies.

What we're starting to see is the rebirth of local community publications like non-profit donation supported pubs: http://www.newhavenindependent.org and http://www.texastribune.org.

We're also starting to see rapidly expanding for-profit groups like Community Impact. Who would have thought that relentlessly focusing on quality content would pay off?

It's often easier to get local advertisers to buy into the idea that they'll be targeting a local audience. Why wouldn't your bake-off article example be sponsored by the local grocery store or law firm? Which local advertiser wants to appear next to the national political debate article?

[EliAndrewC]

That's interesting, because I always think of the Lawrence Journal World (the creator of the Django web framework) and Adrian Holovaty's excellent writeup of how they thrive by excelling at local news: http://www.holovaty.com/writing/fundamental-change/

[ahi]

They did that in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The local paper is now annarbor.com. It's terrible. They don't really have any professionals left. Most of the articles are written by interns or kids right out of school with no sense of history or context, and amount to "Theirs[sic] a story here, but can't be bothered to make phone call." Ostensibly they cover my neighboring town as well, but they just run the police crime blotter and auto-post Eastern Michigan University's press releases. They are still losing a ton of money.

[tptacek]

In fairness, was the local paper in Ann Arbor ever any good? (I lived there from '01-'05).

Small communities have been poorly served by local papers long before the Internet ate them.

[ahi]

I don't think it was ever very good, but they did fire a bunch of people I would consider competent. Apparently competent is too expensive.

[wglb]

It was OK for a community of that size in 75-83.

[dhimes]

I just finished some customer development surveys. Few people read the local BIG paper; most get their news online and from the local papers. Pretty surprising to me, but there you go.

[jeremymims]

This isn't all that surprising.

Regional papers rely on wire services for national stories. Thus, it doesn't matter which newspaper you read, you'll probably be reading the AP's story. You might just as easily read the "really good" original article at The New York Times (it's only a Google search away). The regionals also cover a larger geographic area which means they're getting pinched on their truly local coverage. On an average day they'll have less relevant local content than the small local paper.

The other big disadvantage of regional newspapers is that advertisers don't want to effectively throw away their ad dollars spending to buy a region when they could buy a better targeted town or neighborhood. It's just less efficient for most types of businesses.

[dhimes]

By local BIG paper I specifically mean the Boston Globe or Boston Herald.

I would rather take out an ad in the Globe than in a bunch of smaller papers (one per town, but they are grouped under umbrella companies so it's not quite as bad as it sounds), but not if my prospects aren't going to read it.

Small regional papers may be better vectors for small regional businesses, but I would guess that Sears, Friday's and Pep Boys would also prefer to cover a larger area.