The problem with modern print journalism is the business model just doesn't work anymore. In the old days everything the paper provided was bait to get you to read the classified ads. DBAs, obits, for sale, for rent, seeking someone... all that stuff was in the paper, and you had to pay a lot of money to get your ad there.

The regular ads and the cover price paid for printing, mostly, but the classifides were what paid for the organization's fixed costs.

Now that revenue stream is gone. So most papers are in a death spiral, in which they cut costs, which causes the paper to be less attractive, causing people to drop their subs, forcing another round of cost cutting. The Sunday paper where I grew up used to be about two inches thick in half a dozen sections. Now it totals about twenty pages in one section.

Beyond that, you can't copyright news. You can copyright news copy, but there's nothing stopping other organizations from rewording your stuff and publishing without ever shouldering the cost of gathering news themselves.