But who collects the stories for the agencies - it used to be the local reporters who are the ones gone. This is the point of the statistic

I am in UK and look at my local papers - the number of stories is massively down and the report numbers are much smaller. One reporter now for several London boroughs when there used to be several for one.

Who is looking at local government now?

No one, and (though I'm not sure this is true in the UK as well, though I imagine it is) it's pretty much 100% private equity's fault. They bought up every local paper they could, saddled them with the debt (how that's a thing that's allowed in accounting I will never understand), and then claimed the Internet killed them.

Yes, news orgs could have adapted faster, but most privately held papers were in the black. Only when the debts and insane growth expectations were added were they dying.

Private equity is ruining modern democratic institutions.

Agreed about privat equity in general but the UK papers are all owned by media groups I think so no PEs fault here.

The issue is lack of advertising revenue. No local classified adds or local firms. All gone to Facebook.