For more than a century, newspapers were sustained by a simple business model: Readers paid for the product through subscriptions and advertisers paid to reach those readers. The incentives aligned, and newspapers — even in the smallest communities — could survive.
If a paper provided reliable information, covered local issues, and earned the trust of its readers, both circulation and advertising followed. Journalism was not just a public service; it was a viable business.
Then Big Tech swept in and captured the advertising dollars, and the business model began to crumble. Platforms like Google and Facebook built massive advertising businesses by aggregating audiences at a global scale.
The revenue that once funded local reporting did not disappear. It…
