What you are saying seems fairly accurate to me, but I would add that local media are facing an additional challenge. Aside from traditional media, there are new media. I am talking about young up-and-comers who are trying to find their place in the field. On a neighbourhood level—for example, in the Quebec City region—some of them are creating networks to try to support each other. But here is the challenge: the gateway to news, regardless of its nature, tends to be less and less about the brand, and more and more about a news item in particular. In other words, people no longer read Le Soleil and its contents, but rather a specific news item in Le Soleil.
In Gaspésie, a magazine became the website Graffici. I worked there, as well as at Reader's Digest. Those experiences tell me that people are increasingly aware of new developments, but they access the news in a fragmented, piecemeal way. For instance, three or four years ago, about a third of people accessed the newspaper Le Soleil from Quebec City through its website; another third accessed it through search engines—so by looking for specific topics; and the remaining third accessed it through social networks because they were told about an interesting topic and provided with a link to access the article. The percentage of people accessing that content through search engines and social media is constantly growing.
In Gaspésie, the percentage of people who are going through social media and are interested only in a specific topic flagged by someone else was 65% from the outset. The media responsible for the news was not important to them. Nowadays, loyalty is focused mainly on our smart phones, instead of on specific media. Television is dealing with the same problem. Programming is no longer being consumed as a whole, but rather piecemeal.