At the end of a Monday, this is the top news of a wealthy, well-known Southern California beach resort, population about 90,000. There’s a lot going on in my town. News-type news happens! More than most cities this size. We have a harbor and a large beach.

But apparently the Register (and everyone else, really) decided to save $5 and fire all their reporters. Top stories here include two actual news items, two rewarmed press releases, three canned data stories, and a real estate tout. Just from hearing sirens during the day anyone can tell that a couple of those data-repeating or PR stories could be replaced with a car crash, for chrissakes.

The Register was never an excellent newspaper, but they did cover local news. If a column of smoke was rising from the Westside or 8 cop cars arrived at the high school, you knew they’d have something about it the next day.

Welp that’s done!

What do you all think? What’s the likely effect of disappearing local news over the next decade or so?