I don't think it was an obvious causal relationship ala newspapers making Facebook relevant.
I worked as a contractor at the Mercury News a few years ago and the vast majority of their income came from those Frys' flyers. It might as well be a subsidiary of Frys. Craigslist/Ebay/online marketplaces killed the classifieds/ads that paid for fat newspapers for a quarter when I was a kid in the 70' and 80's. Newspapers were pretty desperate for eyeballs when their income started sinking then in the early days of Facebook and now for survival.
