Read this article on how (and what) the Associated Press (AP) is and how it came into being.
It explains why we always hear the same news on every channel and in every paper.
But the real problem is not the number of newspapers we now have, but that they refuse to compete with each other, a symptom of the AP-created culture of collaboration over competition. For example, in any other business, if there were a highly successful paper in one city, it would be natural for it to expand to a nearby city to dethrone the leader. But as members of the same AP network, papers assume their cities belong to them, and no other member has the right to invade it. Even if a neighboring paper did invade, the AP network makes it nearly impossible for them to succeed through competition because all papers are essentially running the same stories anyway.
Frustrating.
It serves to remind me why I am so happy and thankful for blogs.