Were the any better pre internet? When the sold papers.
Much the same if you ask me.
it was "here's forty-odd pages of news, sports, stocks, local politics, comic strips, curated reviews, curated op-eds, tailored editorials and a pile of coupons worth more than the newspaper's price from a local organization that has one or maybe two competitors for giving you this information... for two bits."
There's really no comparison anymore.
Any "valuable" news/sports/politics/stocks is all freely available from dozens of competing sources.
What's left is Opinions, Reviews and Editorials, which are freely available from thousands of free competitors.
the idea that anyone would blindly microtransact ("pay $0.02 to read my clickbait article ChatGPT wrote for me!") is one waiting for all free content to go away first.
Presumably to “compete” for micro transactions, assuming there is a broad based acceptance of them and they add up to something meaningful, would allow for more local journalism