paying for the physical paper made sense specially for local papers - since relevant local ads/ opportunities were in those papers.

now the major papers just run propaganda under the veneer of news - looking at you NYT.

now why would you pay for biased coverage for a piece of news & not even see the relevant business opportunities / ads ?

internet ads are personalized but don't make you 'money' ie show you opportunities such as RFQs/tenders/jobs requested by local businesses as it was back in the paper days.