Stresses were already apparent in the newspaper industry in the 1970s, though. Remember the legalization of joint operating agreements? That was courtesy of the Newspaper Preservation Act. Of 1970.
I went to high school in St. Charles County, Missouri. Our local newspaper was the St. Charles Banner-News. Until May 31, 1978 when it ceased publication and sold its subscription list to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Post started up a zoned section and managed to salvage some reporters' jobs. But a local newspaper in a rapidly growing, prosperous area wasn't able to make it. Sure, there were free "shoppers" that had some news in them and that cut into the Banner-News' business. But in 1978, in that place, you'd think there would have been enough business to go around.
The Post-Dispatch ditched its JOA with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat in 1984. That way it could go to morning publication. The Globe stumbled along for a few more years, under an owner who, we shall just say, was in over his head. The Post lumbered along in its somnolence until Ralph Ingersoll started the St. Louis Sun tabloid in 1989. That failed after a year, but the competition woke up the Post, and it was doing high-quality work into the next decade, and still seems to be a better-than-average newspaper even today.
I cite these examples to indicate that there were stresses going back 55 years or more. They were papered over by various means: consolidation, reliance of upon classified ads for revenues, transition to newer, cheaper, faster computer-based production technologies (know any Linotype operators?), but you have aptly described the wreckage that is now most newspapers. There are lessons there for radio, and radio is failing to learn them. Consolidation will not save you, for starters.
