Playboy, the glossy magazine relic of the pre-#MeToo era as well as the occasional publisher of Margaret Atwood, among others, would seem to have little in common with City AM, the business-led freesheet for London commuters. Yet, just as the whole world is now tackling coronavirus, both titles have suddenly found themselves at the forefront of print media’s own battle against the pandemic.

From this week, both titles will halt their print editions and go online only. A print industry facing structural challenges for decades as its audience and advertising revenues moved online, now faces the consequences of a brutal pandemic raging through populations and economies.

For many of the least secure newspaper titles, especially local papers in the US and UK, the virus could sound the death knell after years of struggle. The question is whether the pandemic will lead to the death of print itself?

That this is even being contemplated at a time when the need and demand for news and information is at an all-time high is the great, somewhat heartbreaking, paradox of an industry that should provide a public as well as private good. Traffic to online news sites is up across the board: the Mail Online editor claimed a 50% increase to its home page while viewing figures for TV public service broadcasters are at levels not seen since the financial crisis of 2008.

The 66-year-old Playboy magazine, hurt over many years by the shift online for porn more than anything, is as far removed from local news providers as it is possible to imagine. Yet in the announcement made via an open letter on Medium, the chief executive, Ben Kohn, blamed the coronavirus pandemic for simply speeding up a decision based on underlying industry concerns. As the US started to close down last week, he wrote: “We were forced to accelerate a conversation we’ve been having internally: the question of how to transform our US print product to better suit what consumers want today.”

Christian May, the City AM editor who was in self-isolation along with his heavily pregnant wife and young child last week when he had to tell staff the news, said the virus presented his business with the “two horns of a buffalo”. The announcement by the government last week advising people to work from home more or less wiped out the commuters who pick up City AM – while the companies which spend money on print advertising have effectively disappeared too. May said the company has suspended publication of a physical edition until it becomes viable to print again.

One look at the largest advertisers in print media points to how potentially catastrophic coronavirus is for the industry in general. The travel and transport sector spent the most on advertising in print media (magazines as well as newspapers) in 2018, according to research by AA/WARC and Enders Analysis: a category which has so far spent 2020 fighting for its life rather than advertising.

While other categories from motors to cosmetics and food have shifted to different media such as TV since 2009, entertainment and leisure had kept relatively loyal to its print titles in 2018. With all non-essential socialising cancelled, few entertainment and leisure companies are likely to advertise again in the first half of this year.

At the beginning of last week, Joshua Benton, who runs Harvard University’s Nieman Lab, made a “confident prediction” that 2020 would be the worst year ever for US local media, partly because of cumulative years of underinvestment and owners focused on cash flows before Covid-19.

It is hard not to make similar dire warnings for a local newspaper industry in the UK that has struggled with the same industry dynamics – notably profit-hungry owners and revenues squeezed by Facebook and other social media. More than 50% of Facebook’s total revenues comes from small and medium sized enterprises. That’s essentially the same local hairdressing salon or builders’ merchants who would once have advertised in the local paper.

The overall trend on both sides of the Atlantic when it comes to closures and jobs has been similar too. Jobs in US newspapers fell 55% in the first 16 years of this millennium, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the UK, a net 245 local news titles closed from 2005 to the end of 2018, according to Press Gazette research.

The newspaper industry shares some of the blame for its decline, which long predates Covid-19 and goes back to the point when the industry started giving away its content for free while hoping that circulation revenues could be replaced by advertising. This led to “commercial content” no longer referring to great stories that would attract loyal readers but to words paid for by businesses.

Douglas McCabe, the chief executive and director of publishing at Enders Analysis, describes putting so much emphasis on how much Tesco would pay to run ads alongside journalism as “a mad model” compared with making consumers gladly pay for the content itself.

The decision to give content away for free, taken in the teeth of an industrial upheaval, can be seen as a precursor to the growth in distrust of news, which was increasingly considered a commodity when Facebook et al suggested anyone with a smartphone could commit a valid act of journalism.

There are signs of hope amid the dire warnings for local newspapers, however. It seems almost trite to say that the world needs good journalism more than ever now but people also urgently need verified information in the face of not only an unprecedented health emergency, but technology’s ability to spread fake news. What’s more, the social distancing measure being brought in to fight coronavirus makes localism and local news even more important, whether that’s which neighbour needs help today or how to save local institutions.

On Friday, more than 60 regional press titles in the UK published identical front pages with headlines which promised common cause with their local communities. They declared: “We know that for you, having a constant feed of reliable news and information that you trust is vital, and this is our commitment to you: whatever happens, we will be there for you.”

The BBC offered measures to help social cohesion amid the crisis last week, in so doing appearing like the adult in the room while the government still seemed like a teenager. But it could still do more to help local news providers, maybe helping to drive traffic to local news sites. There should be a way of making this support for local communities rather than greedy owners which have bled their local newspapers dry and are only now squealing.

In the case of City AM, the freesheet launched 15 years ago, the editor is “committed” to a return to printing almost 90,000 copies once the worst of the pandemic is over, but its 60 staff members’ salaries will be halved from April.

A full lockdown will put even more pressure on the two other London commuter freesheets – the Metro and the Evening Standard. On Friday, the Standard said it would continue to produce a print edition while demand was still strong. But the print run would be reduced to 500,000 copies and, for the first time, the Standard will be delivered directly to people’s homes across London. This, said CEO Mike Souter, was not only to protect staff but “in the context of currently lower advertising volumes, it makes good economic sense too”. Until recently 800,000 copies were printed a day.

Editor George Osborne is one of 10 Standard executives coming into the office every day rather than working from home. In an editorial last Friday, the paper wrote: “In 2020, as our country and our capital faces one of the greatest crises in its history, our message to our readers is this: we will be there for you.”

No one knows how long this pandemic will last or exactly how much damage it will cause. At the end of it, it is still to be hoped that some local papers at least are still here.