It is the 'paper of record'
I am just pointing that out because your comment doesn't make sense as it reads like these newspapers are becoming 'increasingly' dominant or narrative setting.
They have been that way for decades.
Second, the old-school newspapers still have a very strong culture of research and reporting interwoven deeply within their walls. Sure, they make mistakes, but they have a much greater stake in the accuracy and importance-weighting of their news reporting than a user-driven content company like Facebook or Twitter.
You missed numbers 1 (the Wall Street Journal), 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 in America’s top eight by circulation [1]. Not to mention the proliferation of specialist papers (e.g. Axios, POLITICO, the Information, et cetera) and foreign papers (e.g. the BBC, Economist, FT, et cetera) and wire services (e.g. Reuters, AFP, the AP, et cetera).
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Un...
I'm personally worried about the dominance of big newspapers. It seems that the field of "trusted online newspapers" has narrowed down to only the New York Times and Washington Post. Most non-Tech Hackernews submissions come from either Nytimes or WaPo.
I worry because these newspapers seem to increasingly be setting the political and social narrative for the entire country. That's a lot of power to give Jeff Bezos and Carlos Slim.