Re: Science not important to news papers.
I'm a member of the Australian Science Communicators, a group that straddles the ground between scientists and journos, and this is part of the area of our interest.
My comments:-
Newspapers per se are not anti-science. The problem is that science stories are hard to write for untrained journos, and most scientists are not user-friendly.
The general public has a reasonable thirst for science stories, but they are much harder to write than non-science, apparently.
This is a tricky area and a lot of conflicting information and subjective impressions, but worth looking into further if you have time...