Exactly, that's the thing people keep missing in these discussions. That $0.25 for your newsstand paper didn't pay for the costs of paying reporters and journalists; it really only paid for distribution and maybe printing costs (e.g., a lot of that quarter went to the local newsstand, not the newspaper). These days, distribution costs are pretty close to zero since they don't need printing presses, trucks to drive papers around, newsstands, and all the people to staff this machinery. They do need IT personnel and some servers, but the per-viewer cost there is much less. Newspapers got the bulk of their funding from advertising back then, so readers' expectations haven't really changed that much, the newspapers have simply gotten much worse at funding themselves with ads.
The real death of the news was that with the internet, these sleepy old papers suddenly had competition from around the world. No longer was it an essential regional monopoly or cartel of a couple news orgs being the source of truth for a given region. Now that they no longer have their moat, what do you know, old establishment folded to things people would rather spend their attention on now that they actually have the choice to do so.
True, but there's more: as I pointed out in my sister comment here, newspapers used to pull in money from classified ads too, but the internet made those completely obsolete. Basically, pre-internet, the only way to communicate with other people (other than directly or with a phone) was through TV, radio, or newspapers. Newspapers were by far the cheapest option, and most accessible to regular people (i.e., the classifieds). The internet replaced that: now people can communicate with others through the internet and various websites and other digital services.
It wasn't just about "the truth", it was about how people could participate in mass communications: the newspapers had a lock on one of the main ways to do this. The internet gave us a new communications medium.
Many newspapers gave away most of the value in their advertising power to Google and Facebook, for free, because they just didn't understand how internet advertising was going to work.
Now they've decided to blame and shame their own readers rather than actually try to compete against other media for people's dollars.
But it's a good point. Classified ads were purchased by individuals or small companies usually. Now, the people things did with those, they do for free, or use some other paid service that's not affiliated with a news organization. Instead of paying for an ad in the "personals", people use dating apps (either for free, or they pay for a premium membership to get extra benefits). Instead of paying for a classified ad to sell their old car or appliance, they post it for free on Ebay or Craigslist or FB Marketplace, and in most cases pay a commission when they receive payment through the site. So basically, other services took this revenue stream away from the newspapers.
