Reading these quotes from recent blog posts makes me think again about the reasons newspapers are dying:
James Lileks:" Newspapers to me no longer look like great sober edifaces inscribing the details of history as the parade clatters past. They just look like group blogs."
Tim Oren: "A newspaper has been an icon of intent to engage with the world, the community, with business and politics, and often a representation of one's stance. But that's been hollowed out, bit by bit, and there's little more left than a symbolic husk."
Michael Sippey: "The technology and culture trends point towards more customer control, not more marketer control, so anyone who wants to play in this game is going to have to give up the ghost of one-to-one marketing and instead enable customers to do their own media mix creation."

Some realities, observed:
--The explosion of blogging reflects a (new) form of customer control.
--The growth of newsreaders is linked to everyone's growing comfort with P2P and playlists, two great teaching tools for personalization and customization.
--Speed, not accuracy, is one of the most highly prized aspects of news today.
--More and more classifieds are now powered by community, not commodity.

And newspapers?
With the exception of some(impressive) leaders, most of the newspaper entities are still worrying about how to win customers back, but are not yet acting on the realizations that technology, social media, and customer attention shifts are undermining their basic business assumptions.

Or, to put it another way, we're watching a medium shift--and risk becoming irrelevant.