Most local business owners - who buy newspaper ads - are conservative-leaning, if not partisan repubs.
Local papers can only stay in business by selling ads. Even many large papers have shut down or are in trouble because business owners found other ways to advertise.
A large enough coalition of ad buyers signing some kind of petition demanding "fair and balanced" coverage in the local paper, delivered to the PUBLISHER or Account Manager and not to the Editor, will go a long way toward getting some non-biased news coverage.
I've been a working journalist for 16 years (doing general hard news stories and entertainment features for a midsize Texas daily), and in that time I've seen the newsroom go from 18 full-time reporters to 3, with 3 freelancers and an unpaid intern. Now that the paper is facing its demise, it has cut out most of the liberal bias in the reporting and trimmed back much of the liberal slant on the op-ed page. Even so, it might still be too late for the paper, since it has already created such a nice market for alternative advertising through its biased news presentation.
Something to think about, at least.