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 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.

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.