How Private Equity Gutted Local Newspapers: A Data-Driven Autopsy
Private-equity raids turn watchdogs into ghost papers. Here’s the debt-to-dividend playbook and the data behind 2,500 vanished U.S. newspapers since 2005.
Month: June 2025
How the Attention-Merchant Ad Model Bankrupted Local Newspapers
Interruptive ads once bankrolled local news. Big Tech swallowed the model, CPMs cratered, and hedge funds finished the job. Here’s how attention merchants gutted hometown papers—and what’s next.
Ghost Papers: How Hedge Funds Hollowed Out Local Newsrooms
Hedge-fund math turned proud metro dailies into “ghost papers” that publish wire copy and obits—leaving city halls unwatched and voters uninformed.
What Is a News Desert and Why It Matters
Why do some Charlotte suburbs hear crickets, not city hall? Discover how news deserts form, why they hollow communities, and what Mercury Local plans to do about it.
Google AI Destroys Search Traffic: Mercury Local Thrives
Google Isn’t a Search Engine Anymore “AI Armageddon” Arrives Isabella Simonetti and Katherine Blunt opened Today’s Wall Street Journal report with a blunt verdict: the “AI armageddon is here for online news publishers.” Chatbots now sit atop results, answering questions outright, siphoning clicks from the blue links that once paid newsrooms’ bills. HuffPost’s organic search traffic “fell by just over … Read more