My local fish wrap in Dallas gives me a Sunday paper unsolicited once or twice a month to try and get me to sign up...
It comes in handy during the winter when I need to get a fire going.
Unrequested sample issues....
Official circulation figures are used to attract and set charges for advertisers. A few thousand free copies count as circulation. I wonder how many people really pay for the print papers? Esquire and others charge a loss amount to get a lot of subscribers so they can boast about the numbers.
It seems to be really hard to get people to pay for the online ones. They threaten if you happen by chance onto a link “Four more free articles. See our sale on three month subscription.” Before I swore off Drudge (this dates my info.) I hated getting a NYT,LA Times or WaPo article after an innocent looking clickbait link.
My theory is like music which was free, then stolen by young people, then the legal price of $0.99 ,then $1.29 seemed like a lot. I still refuse their streaming subscriptions.
The print journals of newspapers used to have the articles all over the internet-—for free (1996-1999 or so). Then they realized they were laying off hundreds of staff and losing money, so they clamped down. For online issue subscriptions pay $69.99 for Newsweek, $89.50 for Time, $49 for Rolling Stone-—and more.
But what used to be free and now is charged money to get seems expensive. Music or reading matter.