You're not the one that gets to decide if that was offensive. If he was not comfortable enough to be out at the time that was written, then yes, that could be completely offensive to him.
For 99.9% of human beings, such article would never make someone spend enough money to put this newspaper out of business.
> I'm not deciding for him
You kind of are... by pointing out what you think is expected behavior and judging his against that benchmark.
And 99.9% of human beings wouldn't have that kind of money to spend in the first place. Now, if you were to adjust the amount of money as a % of wealth down to the average income, would they spend that much, if that's all it took?