Re: short termist
Most local papers got purchased by a small number of far bigger media companies, and did a cynical cost cutting exercise of cutting local reporters, meaning a "local" paper was soon almost the same news as that for its nearest big city.
As the buyout of independent papers was happening at a similar time to web monetization first becoming a big thing, its difficult to know where the blame lies. I know the local paper stopped wanting results of local sports / hobby leagues submitting many years ago (the minor local stuff such as town based darts, pool, skittles, football leagues i.e. the real amateur, local club & society stuff)
I do know my "local" paper website is unusable due to all the advertising / scripts that infest it (turned blockers off on the site to give them revenue but that idea backfired as I just ran away screaming from the abomination of a website that was served up to me) and only really has news of the big towns / cities near me (and not much news then).