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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

Seriously newspapers spent the entire 20th century charging people as much as $100 for classified ads, job postings, real estate listings, etc. Craigslist murdered them and they deserved it. Everything after that has been sour grapes.

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Do you realy think the value they give to communities is less than have 100$ job post

My local newspaper is a notoriously worthless rag that has probably done more to harm humanity than to benefit it, including starting a major war.

Your local newspaper has started a major war?

Yes. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1866-1898/yellow-journa...

I was about to say you must be from New York, but I was rather thinking about NYTimes, Judith Miller and the US War on Iraq. Plus ça change...

Incredible, I'm glad I asked - TIL. Thank you!

I think local papers give lots of value, but at the same time if I am a for-profit business, my goal isn't to help out the local newspaper, it's to make (and possibly save) as much money as possible. I don't know the success numbers of job classified ads, but I doubt it comes anywhere near the success numbers of places like Indeed or StackOverflow Jobs or Dice, all of which charge substantially less money and reach a larger audience.

People have a really rosy memory of local newspapers, but I grew up in a small midwest town with an "award winning" local newspaper in pre internet days, and I remember it mostly consisting of poorly written drivel and AP wire articles.

I'm sure it was a mixed bag but Corporate Media did not break the Epstein story. They famously avoided it, @see Amy Robach and ABC News leak. The Miami Herald, a local paper, broke the story thanks to a great journalist there.

IMO you are really discounting just how massive the importance of local journalism has historically been.

PE firms are now buying up and destroying these once great outlets, including the Miami Herald.

I don't think the local newspaper in their community would have broken the Epstein news story either. The Miami Herald is one of the largest in Florida, and where many of Epstein's crimes took place.

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