[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.

[Grampa Dave]

You are correct re low paying subscribers.

However, when they inflate even these low paying subscribers with phoney #'s, some insiders in some newspaper have been getting charged with fraud by advertisers, getting sued and some of the key fraud people have gotten jail sentences.