The problem as with many things is that people just don't care and they just want things as cheap as possible. Even if people had a great local journal, there's no real reason to pay well for it when you can just figure things out a day later on facebook. Quality can go down without most people noticing because lots of people couldn't tell apart good reporting from bad , a good portion would have to put in effort to do so and an even smaller portion would immediately notice. Less incentive to go into local journalism if you're bright as well, dying field with little chance to go 'up'.