[Grampa Dave]

They don't call here any more, and that was before the new rules went into effect re telephone solicitation.

This past week, my wife got an offer for a Weekly subscription to the Slimes for under $3/week. There is no way they can afford print the copies up and get them delivered to our driveway for $3/week. So are they using valuable $'s to pony up their so called paid subscription numbers?

[kevkrom]

I think most newspapers are sold at a "loss" in this manner. The real revenue comes from advertising. Ideally, they'd give the paper away for free, but then the advertisers would have no idea who's actually reading the paper and how much an ad is worth. So they typically charge a modestly small amount, which, moreso than the extra revenue it generates, implies that since someone is paying for it, that they're bothering to actually read it.