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Bought links have for a long time been against webmaster guidelines. Fair or not, those sites buying are taking a gamble - and so are the sites selling them. One day (if Google get's its way) there will not be any sites selling or buying links in the index. It might not leave many sites (!) but will you be one of the survivors? In the long term, like it or not, we have to do it Google's way if we want to be in included their index.

It's great to have a link to your site from a national newspaper, what an exposure! It is expected for the newspaper to mark your link no follow as they cannot vouch for your content however there is much value in the link being present. It is still a backlink which is counted and surely has a value somewhere in Google's complex algorithms. It is also a great 'natural' link to your site. As more weight is given to link profiles it would seem quite unnatural to have no nofollow links. In all, it's a great link to have - well done!

If you are posting on blogs and forums that are relevant or related to your niche then do not worry if they are follow or no follow, the back link will surely be counted in some sense, if not now then during an algo change in the future. Having backlinks from no follow blogs at least shows that you are willing to participate in discussions without the prize of link juice in return. This is a good thing. These days I do not check for the follow status of a blog or forum, I believe all links have some value. I also believe that Google's algorithm is far more complex than we can imagine. Including or excluding certain link types would definitely be an unnatural linking method. So my best advice is not to bother checking the follow status.

I think it is unlikely that some effective Negative SEO has been performed and had an effect on your site rankings so quickly. The movements you are experiencing are more likely related to:

1. Your site was linked to from a network which increased pagerank but these links are no longer of any value and so this has reduced the incoming link value to your site.

2. The significant reduction of backlink quantity in a short period has caused a ripple in your SERPS score, this will eventually even out as more time passes.

So there are two things affecting your short term SERPS position and this will become less significant as time passes and these events become more distant.

No doubt it is upsetting to find such a move however with the rollout out of Panda 3.4 (and other algo changes) everyone can expect movement in some way or another.

While you await your appropriate SERPS positions to return, proceed to focus your efforts on building good unique content, knowing that visitor activity on your site is being evaluated and by providing a great experience to your visitors you will find that your are doing exactly what Google is looking for.