[Alex3917]

"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."

This doesn't make sense. My understanding is that newspapers weren't primarily ad-supported until the 1920s, when new technologies enabled nationwide economies of scale for both newspapers and ad buyers. Is this not correct?

[jeremymims]

Newspapers were largely ad driven since their "modern day" inception in the early 1700's.

I'm going to need to write a blog post about this since I'm seeing so much confusion about how we got where we are and why we've ended up with ad models we have. It may take me a month or two to get to, but I think this community would benefit greatly from it.