Good link and commentary by Brad Stone (the real one), looking at the decline of local news on the web. Per my previous posts, hyperlocal does not appear to be the answer. Five or six years ago, when we first started thinking about the impact of blogs and news, we hypothesized that brand would matter -- that the need for authoritative and trusted voices would trump almost anything else, on the web or in analog form. While there would be new trusted voices that would appear quite quickly, the ability to sustain that trust over time was hard and would have to be earned, and that the media who were able to take their authority and move it online would do well.
Appears that is the case. The interesting part in the study is the growth of the pure aggregator sites like Yahoo, Google and Digg. I can see the first two continuing to do well, but am deeply skeptical about Digg -- the question is how/if they can actually develop the brand beyond where it is now. Of course, I would've said the same thing about Drudge some years ago, so my powers of prognostication are far, far from perfect!