I suspect it is. I think the real problem was sites like craigslist (and online advertising in general) removing much of the (classified, job listing, etc) advertising that made publishing a newspaper profitable.

It was discussed extensively at the time and in the years since

I remember in a very early 1990s (maybe '91 or '90) the Utne Reader had an article talking about how journalism outlets were merging at a rapid rate, resulting in layoffs and consolidation. The author feared that by 2000 there would only be 4-5 news conglomerates left. The internet was pretty much for engineering Universities and Tech companies (and all command line at that) so certainly before the 'open internet' as most people think of it.

Many people in the news industry were complaining about this situation. It's very well known.

It is very true. Back in early 2000s , I was in a startup that built publication management tools for newspapers. I recall making about 700 phone calls and speaking to the editorial staff to get them to sign up. And this is where I learnt that only a handful of obscure companies owned nearly all of local newspapers.

Cost effective but soulless. Local news was killed by private equity and consolidation.

I am so confused by the implied timeline of the top comment here. And if the open internet happened after 2008 it’s … news to me.

The commenter was saying after the decline of the open internet.

Nick Davies wrote "Flat Earth News" about this very problem in 2008:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Davies#Bibliography