The New York Times’ Ben Smith thinks it’s time to replace struggling local newspaper with a national network of new online newsrooms. “The time is now to make a painful but necessary shift: Abandon most for-profit local newspapers, whose business model no longer works, and move as fast as possible to a national network of nimble new online newsrooms,” he writes. “That way, we can rescue the only thing worth saving about America’s gutted, largely mismanaged local newspaper companies -- the journalists.”