I don't really understand these people either.
Anyway, I've been mulling a long post for awhile now, but the short version is that local newspapers, which have in most locations been effective local monopolies, convinced themselves that their market power was justified by their status as Very Important Institutions and have since had an inability to pull their heads out of their asses and get over themselves.
That isn't to say that local journalism isn't important and that the best hope for that reality hasn't been newspapers, but no specific newspaper is especially important.
