I’m not sure I agree that news is more competitive now within its own business? (I’m not sure what the Danish branche is in English), but rather that there are just so many things competing for people’s attention in general. With SoMe being actively designed to be addictive through various algorithms I think it’s only natural that people spend more of their time on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit or even HackerNews. I think that is time that a lot of people would’ve otherwise spend on news.
Add to this the introduction of terrible news media. The spam and click bait media, where you get the articles for free but the articles you get are basically worse than what you’d find anywhere else because they are most there to generate revenue from advertising. Stuff that gives “traditional” news media a very bad image. Further add the media platforms which are now straight up political propaganda, which some always where, but now they are owned by very few people and push very divisive agendas which is a little different from the past where they were more inline with each other and the “general” aristocracy rather than a few billionaires/oligarchs and you gain the general media perception even more. Both are rightfully so.
In a sense you get what you pay for though. If you’re not paying you’re not getting quality news. You can see this in Danish news very clearly, where only a handful of news papers still do actual critical journalism and the rest mainly do opinions or click-bait articles on current events that you might as well read on Facebook. Not because Facebook does anything particularly in that department but because the contractors who sell stories and pictures to the “free” news media typically also post their content elsewhere for increased revenue on their part.
As far as going to the “biggest” most “cultural” news media I totally agree with you. In my country people read Weekend Avisen, and then add one of the more politically inclined subscription papers based on their views. But basically it boils down to thee papers, one that is slightly more conservative (which in Scandinavian/American optics would make it almost socialist), one that is left-leaning (again, very socialist in American optics) and one that is based on Christianity (but extremely moderate, as in pro abortion and gay marriage).
Aside from that there are two “localised” papers which either focus heavily on Copenhagen or the part of our country which is called Jylland.
Almost none of these papers would be alive without government subsidies. Because the only two papers which actually makes money are Weekendavisen (our NYT) and the Christian paper which doesn’t actually make money but is subsidised by various Christian groups.