Newspapers are burdened by their failure to break out of the convolution of the idea of their identity with their historical form. Newspapers are still stuck on the model of providing a "full" news experience to its readers much in the same way that many failed big dot-coms (Excite comes to mind) held too long to the "portal" model of the web during the first dot-com boom/bust.<p>In an era where communication is difficult there is value in aggregating that communication (local news, national news, international news, business news, sports, weather, broadcast advertisements, etc.) into one coherent source. There's a great network effect in that model. However, that model is broken by modern technology which has dramatically lowered the cost of communication. There no longer is any value to regurgitating the same AP wire report in the local paper since the cost to distribute such reports to the entire world are practically nil in the modern age.<p>There is still value in unique, original reporting but modern news institutions do so little of that. This is where the conflict comes from. The value of a newspaper was once the sum of the value of the network effect of the readership (e.g. in regards to classified ads) and the transmission of non-local news and the original reporting. Today none of those things have true value except the last. And, unfortunately for most papers, this is the most difficult, most costly, and lowest margin aspect of the entire paper.<p>There's still value in some of the things newspapers do, but newspapers still insist on defining themselves in forms that are no longer financially sensible in the context of modern technology. Until that changes (maybe via most newspapers dying and being replaced by more modern institutions) newspapers will continue their long slow slide into oblivion.