It was the right short-term strategy. Would you rather be in charge of a media enterprise that is producing dwindling revenue, has a limited lifespan, aging workforce and no way to attract new talent, or one with smaller but rising revenue, sexy requisitions and massive future opportunities?
That dichotomy is convenient, but false. News organizations have no problem attracting new talent. It is difficult to get a job as a journalist.
The only news organizations that both have had a print product and meet your latter description stopped printing because they'd squeezed all of the profit out of it that was there to have, and their "smaller but rising revenue" from their online operations are all that remain. Until you can point to an online business model that is more profitable than print, preserving print and its attendant profits was clearly the right strategy.
