And if you do - if it hasn't been shut - you'll be lucky to find more than one reporter. That reporter will take the pictures and may even deliver the paper.

That reporter will barely have time to take a breath.

That reporter is unlikely to be able to get to the sittings of the magistrates court just up the road.

He or she may get to the monthly council meeting - though a survey of local government areas found that more than a third of them no longer have a reporter at their meetings.

In other words, in many places in Australia, a glue which holds people together is weakening and disappearing. Large parts of public life are increasingly unscrutinised and invisible to voters, citizens and taxpayers.

The decline continues. Dozens of papers have recently closed or suspended normal operations, from the Cape and Torres News to the Manly Daily.

"Already in 2020, over 150 mastheads have either suspended operations or been shuttered," according to the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance union.

Part of the reason is, of course, COVID-19 - but the longer-term cause comes from Google and Facebook.

All those small adverts which used to be in the back section of every paper - the classifieds from "Legal Notices" to "Raffle Results" to "Livestock" to "Garage Sales" - are now on the platforms which use content created by others, like newspapers and broadcasters, even though they don't pay anything like the cost of creation.

When News Corp Australia suspended the printing of 60 titles in NSW, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia in April, its chairman, Michael Miller, said COVID-19 "came on top of the toll on media from the refusal of digital platforms to pay publishers to use their content".

The loss of local papers matters, according to Dr Kristy Hess, who has been researching the situation.

The Deakin University academic says local papers and radio stations bind small towns and communities together. Local newspapers and tech giants like Google and Facebook are on an "unfair playing field".

But doesn't new technology push out the old? Drovers once used horses, but now the quad bike roars over properties. The fireman on the steam train is as dead as the Tasmanian tiger.

The counterargument is that Google and Facebook do offer huge benefits - but at an unacceptably high cost.

It is not about whether we want Google and Facebook or local media. It is about how both can survive, to the benefit of all.

Gathering news is costly. Reporters (don't gasp) need wages, but the two companies have found a money mine where they get the benefits of the gathered news without paying the costs of gathering it.

The key concept which sets the money rolling in is "targeted advertising".

When you click on a website, the deep inner workings of Facebook and Google mean your tastes are known based on what you've clicked on before.

A picture of you is built up - of your political leaning, age, health or financial concerns and, crucial to companies' revenue, shopping habits - so that when you click on a website, the adverts neatly fit what you might buy.

If you click on them, Google gets paid by the advertiser.

You might think you are the customer of Google and Facebook, but in fact you are the product.

Media companies now look hopefully (perhaps too hopefully) to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

It's drafted a code by which "the Australian media will be able to bargain with Google and Facebook to quickly secure fair payment for news content".

If they can't agree, an arbitrator will decide on how much money Google and Facebook should pay media organisations, including this newspaper.

The government backs the code, so it should happen, shouldn't it?

Not so fast. Google and Facebook are fighting against it like their lives depend on victory.

Facebook is threatening to take news off its site in Australia.

The political question is: would there be outrage if Australians suddenly found their usual source of news - say, the ABC or this paper, was not available on Facebook?

About 40 per cent of Australians get their general news via Facebook, so there's a bit of politics left to be done.

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Google and Facebook already accept the principle of paying media organisations.

When you are directed to the website of this paper, for example, and you click on an advert for a new handbag, Google gets the bulk of the money from the advert. The paper gets a few cents.

If the ACCC code becomes law, the negotiation would be about who gets how much.

Other countries have tried it.

In 2014, Spain passed a law compelling Google to pay a licence fee to display news content - so the company shut down Google News, the part of Google that puts lots of news sites together.

There was a dip in traffic to the websites of papers and broadcasters - but this persuaded those media companies to concentrate on growing their own audiences.

And in Germany, a coalition of media companies negotiated with Google, but Google divided and ruled, blocking the tougher negotiators from its platform.

A lot rides on this.

Google and Facebook are fighting for their ability to make money hand over fist. If Australia or the European Union succeed in imposing substantial costs on them, every government will see a way to do the same. It's the precedent which matters.

And something else rides on it: what kind of society do we want?

When generals used to stage coups in banana republics, the first buildings they took over were the newspaper office and the radio station.

They knew that those buildings were the heart and soul of a town. Control them and you control more than the ability to make money.