Blame is a strong word, it's massive shifts in consumer behavior.
I assume you know news rooms got decimated? When I grew up, every household had a newspaper subscription, costing the equivalent of perhaps 200$ per year.
Virtually all that revenue is gone, replaced by extremely difficult to monetize internet users.
News organizations typically are tiny and poor now, not rich and powerful. The ecosystem of smaller local news organizations nearing extinction.
Ads combined with maximizing views are the last thing to leave the lights on.
Are consumer to blame? No. But they stopped paying for news for sure.
It's not just subscriptions, but the classifieds - which were considered 'rivers of gold'. The business model of the news industry was hollowed out by the internet.
In the paper news era, people were much more likely to read in-depth articles. Not necessarily because people were smarter or more intellectually curious, instead because...well, it was pretty much the only information available for the day.
You utilize the information because you consider it valuable based on it being scarce.
Needless to say, we have the opposite problem now. There's an information overdose and we're extremely selective in what we chose to read. And quite obviously, snack-size wins.
Most people now would find it a massive commitment to spend an hour to read and process a detailed article. The few that do, likely check their phone 10 times during this enormous investment of their time.
I assume you know news rooms got decimated? When I grew up, every household had a newspaper subscription, costing the equivalent of perhaps 200$ per year.
Virtually all that revenue is gone, replaced by extremely difficult to monetize internet users.
News organizations typically are tiny and poor now, not rich and powerful. The ecosystem of smaller local news organizations nearing extinction.
Ads combined with maximizing views are the last thing to leave the lights on.
Are consumer to blame? No. But they stopped paying for news for sure.