And no, Twitter and Facebook are not suitable replacements.
Removing local news has created a hyper focus on national news. People forget about their local communities where a ton is happening.
This isn't good for local communities.
We need more focus on the local. Not everything is national.
They don't effect me very much because the government mainly effects the real world and not the internet world.
No. They all go to Facebook and Google.
Not sure why smaller businesses don't do so. I suspect the targeting options aren't good enough to get "spatula city" good ROI.
It's more because small businesses do not know how to market or cater online, still. Sure there are a handful of successful ecomm shops that work in niche markets that work on word of mouth, and then there's the enmasse scale giants like Amazon that have their own marking departments.
tl;dr Tools exist, people don't know. Most common small business solution is to engage their web developer to do marketing on fb/ig and SEO.
Whereas if they print $50 worth of signs and tape them to every nearby street pole, they'll sell $500 more.
I say "not much" because there might be a chance that people would appreciate the combination of local news combined with the national and international coverage that would be shared among all these editions. But that, also, isn't exactly new: it's what these "newspaper chains" have been doing for at least 20 years.
And I do like local news. In fact I care more about city level issues close to home rather than following the bad soap opera that is the national politics.
Yes.
The NYTimes has a Canadian desk. Eventually they'll have a Vancouver desk. Eventually they'll have an East Van desk. Eventually they'll have a Main St desk.
"local news" and "local news media" are not the same. I may pay attention to local news through google, facebook, etc, but never read the local paper or watch local TV news.
I realize what you're saying, but really, local news will always have a geographical monopoly.
Can the NYTimes or WSJ even think about covering local issues? How will investigative reporting function for say a local office holder or a local environmental problem?
To my knowledge the real problem is that the traditional business model supporting reporting has dried up. Running classified ads or selling marketing inserts is an obsolete practice. This doesn't really change the need for local reporting though.