The mean old Internet is killing newspapers

This from the first paragraph of Theodore Dreiser's 1915 novel, The Genius:

This story has its beginnings in the town of Alexandria, Illinois, between 1884 and 1889, at a time when the place had a population of somewhere near ten thousand. There was about it just enough of the air of a city to relieve it of the sense of rural life. It had one street-car line, a theatre—or rather an opera house, so-called (why no one might say, for no opera was ever performed there)—two railroads, with their stations, and a business district, composed of four brisk sides to a public square. In the square were the county court-house and four newspapers.

Four newspapers. In a town of ten thousand. And that "just enough to relieve it of the sense of rural life."

It's not the Internet that's killing newspapers. Newspapers have been dying for a long, long time. At the publishers' hands.