Sure, but then that meant you probably bought the odd single issue, or maybe for an extended period until you found a job. You didn't buy a subscription for the sole purpose of looking at the classifieds.

You bought the bundle. You got games (crosswords and such), Local/National/Intl News, local Arts, schedule info for things like movies/theater, recipes, comics, sports score and analysis, classifieds, even for the ads to see if there were shopping deals to be had.

You bought a subscription in part for the value of one or more sections, but also because culturally everyone else did too, and once you have it you probably found something interesting. Few people ever read everything in the paper front to back regularly. That is why both then and now headlines were important.

Collectors did though, also anybody doing estate sales and auctions.

True.