I think in the past more advertising paid since your attention was also the product. Easier to got to FB now since you can measure ROI and reach way more people.
It does seem like the news industry is in a real bind.
Yes, I am paying $85 a month for a paper that publishes six days a week and never on holidays. There is almost zero investigative news. When the Dr. Larry Nassar story broke at Michigan State it took close to a week before it appeared. Grant you the counter culture weekly in Lansing published on it a day after the Indianapolis paper broke the original story.
I'm happy the price of my local weekly paper (about £2.50) for a town of about 10,000 (most of the paper is the wider county which has a 300k, the first 4 or 6 pages are specifically local)
Because if I (and the others that do pay) don't pay it for local news, then nobody will cover local news, and I value local news coverage far more than £2.50 a week.
Think of it as paying for a youtube channel on patreon.
I want to support local journalism. It is important to me and my community. But paying more to get less makes is hard.