I think it is more complicated than that, newspapers have the problem that they are hemorrhaging cash, but also that the format of a newspaper article is not well suited to convey information. It is just long enough to give the impression of information, but too short to actually establish an argument. And third, especially on QA, the best newspapers get beaten by the best blogs, it is just something fundamentally different if Bruce Schneier writes about crypto, or if someone who aced his math lecture during undergrad studies writes about crypto.
This might be true for highly technical topics but that is not close to most reporting.
Most of the real meat of reporting is on politics, institutions and how they are functioning (or dysfunctional), sociological trends, crime, analysis/commentary on those kinds of topics, and the occasional heartwarming fluff about some quirky local person or organization. We have yet to see professional, disinterested 3rd parties doing serious full-time work on this kind of stuff except when employed as journalists.
