[adestefan]

You were witnessing the people who are directly connected to the event, either through a member of the team or through the school. What about the other 500, 5,000, or 20,000 people in the town that didn't care enough to have instant notification, but still want the information even if it's a day later? That's where you make money.

[CamperBob2]

What about the other 500, 5,000, or 20,000 people in the town that didn't care enough to have instant notification, but still want the information even if it's a day later?

How many events in that class tend to happen? Anybody who cares about a high school track meet is either there, or connected via Twitter/FB/whatever with the people who are. Larger scale events are bipolar: they're either not of immediate interest (new highway construction announced), ignored entirely by most people (the President is in town), or people want to know what's happening now (chemical spill, bomb threat, school shooting...)

The one thing that can be said about local print newspapers is that they aren't the best vehicle for disseminating any of the above news topics except possibly the big-but-not-of-immediate-interest kind.

Finally, the ultimate fate of the newspaper cannot possibly be understood by anyone who, as in Buffett's case, admits he doesn't understand tech.

[greedo]

Are they willing to pay? It appears (based on subscription numbers) that the number of people willing to pay are decreasing.

A lot of the people I work with rely upon FB to serve as their "news." And I in turn use HN as a kind of news service. I rely upon FB, HN, twitter, and RSS for the majority of my news intake. The problem will arise when all that's left are either blog posts that have variable reliability and wire services that have variable depth.