There's a lot of evidence that a large part of the NYTimes revenue surge is a "Trump bump", and that, more broadly, there are way too many media outlets offering free content for the same limited number of eyeballs, and they're burning a lot of VC dollars in the process:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/theres-a-digital-media-...

My take is it costs a lot of money to become worth any money in the space. The story breakers matter a lot more than the story regurgitators, and people see the value enough to pay for it. If you want to shoestring and cost cut your news room, your core value goes to none.

Biggest problem I find is the local news space. There’s nowhere for funded investigative reporting at the local level - I feel like some type of local club or community organization needs to start growing to get it back.

The question is whether that's zero-sum consolidation (as competitors close) or sustainable.

It can be both. Indy bookstores seemed to have reached an equilibrium point after the onslaught of both the big boxes and Amazon. There are many fewer stores, but those that remain are often profitable with loyal followings. They had to innovate to branch into things like becoming half-coffee/half-bookstores, or become better big-boxes themselves, or focus on community events and authors.

Perhaps we'll see a collapse of local news (which really has already happened) and the resurgence of quality national news on a smaller, less competitive, but sustainable basis?

Impressive but digital only subs were $340mm.

That only counts digital-only subscribers (people like my parents still get the Sunday paper with their digital subscription) and if you add in digital advertising, their online-only business is nearly $600M. That's pretty substantial.