"... there is a persistent, widespread view that Newmark’s humble-looking site destroyed classified advertising, one of the newspaper industry’s most valuable cash cows. Last October’s New York Times article – the one that called him a 'villain' – stated: 'Researchers eventually estimated that Craigslist had drained $5bn from American newspapers over a seven-year period. In the Bay Area, the media was especially hard hit'.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/14/craigslist-craig-newmark-outrage-is-profitable-most-online-outrage-is-faked-for-profit
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Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Friday, 21-Feb-2020 22:45:49 UTC Strypey - LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} repeated this.
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LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} (lnxw48a1@nu.federati.net)'s status on Friday, 21-Feb-2020 23:19:45 UTC LinuxWalt (@lnxw48a1) {3EB165E0-5BB1-45D2-9E7D-93B31821F864} @strypey It could be different in other countries, but in the US, newspapers were already in serious decline before the WWW burst onto the scene. In major cities across the country, the #2 paper either closed or merged backend operations with their main competitor.
I believe it was the early 1980s when the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner closed, leaving the Los Angeles Times as the dominant and sole regional paper for Southern California. Meanwhile, local papers in many areas went under common ownership and consolidated production with neighboring areas' papers to survive.
I think the death knell in SoCal was when one or two major radio stations went all news & traffic and one of the major television stations had local news from 16:30 to 19:00 Monday through Friday. Why do you need to buy & read the paper to see stories you heard about the night before over broadcast media?