I'm a little late in posting about this, but I wanted to make sure that everyone saw Fiona Morgan's excellent report published by the New America Foundation about the Triangle's media (released in September).
Fiona used to be a staff writer for The Independent Weekly, and frequently covered new and emerging media as well as the on-going demise of the old media dinosaurs, so she had a head start when she set out to explore and evaluate the state of our information ecosystem. I recommend reading the entire report - it's 45 pages, not including references (download the PDF) but here's her summarized conclusion:
While the Triangle has weathered the economic downturn better than much of the country, cutbacks at the region's major newspaper have led to shrinking coverage of suburban and small-town communities just as the population of those communities continues to grow. As a result, the number of boots on the ground providing accountability coverage of the dozens of local government bodies, regional planning issues and impact of state government politics on local communities has diminished.
