It's hard to see what newspapers could do to get the same returns per unit sold or page viewed as they have historically. And that means a couple possible things: readers bear more of the cost, advertisements get more intrusive (or crazier), or newspapers find some other way to make money.
Then there's the problem of ads influencing me directly, causing me to spend more money on other things, than I otherwise would.
I guess advertising in general, can cause reporters to have an attitude of "if you have a problem, buy a product to solve said problem" rather than "if you have a problem, here's some knowledge to solve said problem".
So overall, I would probably save a significant amount of money by paying more for advertising-free media. But most people don't seem to understand this.