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> That $0.10 you paid for the paper only really covered the cost of printing and distribution, if that.

AFAIK for most newspapers and magazines, the cost on the label was mostly there so that readers would feel like the publication was serious - differentiating them from the free papers which were clearly spam and / or propaganda

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Interesting, thanks for the info.

Yet, despite the newspaper being fully supported by plain, simple, black-and-white print ads (and maybe some color inserts later which were easily discarded), they managed to pay for serious journalists, and they didn't whine about how they need to track you and spy on you and force you to look at obnoxious pop-up ads to make enough money to survive.

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