When has it been otherwise? I don’t have numbers, but I suspect print subscriptions typically only cover delivery and printing costs, with maybe a little surplus beyond that. Advertising has always been what paid the bills for print publications.
This has always been the predominant business model for periodicals. The other, much smaller alternative is paying a lot of money for access to what amounts to research, and it barely exists outside the financial markets.
For a relatively brief, glorious period in the middle of the 20th century, the majority of Americans held--or at least were kind--to the idea that independent, objective, professional journalism could exist and was valuable. During that period publishers could profitably compete attempting to sell that product.
Today most Americans, learned and unlearned, are significantly more cynical, habituated to reject the idea that independent, objective, professional journalism could exist. Regardless of the philosophical truth, what's certainly true as a practical matter is that it cannot exist even aspirationally unless we believe it can exist.
