Sometimes we forget that where there are losers, there are also winners.

And that’s the case with newspaper closures, it seems.

Several months ago, news stories began reporting on research done by economists at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Notre Dame University.

I first saw it reported back in May, in a City Lab story with the headline, “The Hidden Costs of Losing Your City’s Newspaper.”

From the story:

When local newspapers shut their doors, communities lose out. People and their stories can’t find coverage. Politicos take liberties when it’s nobody’s job to hold them accountable. What the public doesn’t know winds up hurting them. The city feels poorer, politically and culturally.

According to a new working paper, local news deserts lose out financially, too. Cities where newspapers closed up shop saw increases in government costs as a result of the lack of scrutiny over local deals, say researchers who tracked the decline of local news outlets between 1996 and 2015.

Similar stories on the research findings have been bouncing around various media for more than two months.

But the financial magazine, Barron’s, published by the Wall Street Journal, ran its own version of the story this week which focused on the implications of newspaper closures for bond investors. And it reminded us that a few find opportunity in newspaper closings.

The research shows that in communities where newspapers closed, bond interest costs to local governments went up. Bad for taxpayers. But that was good news for investors holding those municipal bonds, who earned more in interest payments.

What does all that mean? Costs go up for cities and their taxpayers, and that money in turn is paid out to investors who own the bonds.

Barron’s adds this interesting observation:

There could be a reward for buying the bonds of local governments unhedged by nosy reporters. Corruption could be good for investors, at least in the short run: Take the extra money and close your eyes.

Active investors “actually might find opportunity from those places where there’s less information,” Gao says.

The article concludes:

Perhaps a barbell strategy is best: Buy the bonds of some municipalities where governance seems crooked but clever. Then, in other areas where there are robust local papers, buy the bonds and subscribe to the paper as a hedge, outsourcing research to reporters, who are on average much cheaper, probably, than you.

It is a different view of the world, isn’t it?