You make some very legitimate points.
I know many with clout around here are pro-media, but I myself have no skin in the game. Objectively, it looks like an industry painfully adjusting to the state of information delivery right now. You can't really blame them, it happened so darned fast they could not have seen it coming.
I agree that micropayments could be their secrect sauce if tapped. But either way there will be many news orgs that fall casualty in the transition. This is just the cycle of a free-market system in my opinion, just like your examples of Kodak, where my Grandfather worked, so this is not the first time I have seen something like this.
I don't intend to ruffle high flying feathers, but I think the state of the media is at an all time low. Maybe it is being forced to write clickbait for ad revenue, maybe aggressively fighting to stay relevant, or maybe it's a loss of the original goal of media: unbiased reporting. Honestly, it has been a loooo...
....ooooong time since I have seen unbiased reporting; on any topic, from any outlet, at any time. Perhaps even that is a symptom of people wanting to hear what they already believe in an echo chamber. People only want to hear things they already agree with these days, and silence the opposition. Scary.