In the Netherlands newspapers have traditionally been funded by subscribers. Running a newspaper is not that expensive- most of the news is after all happening in the third world were a few thousand euro can get you far. Have your journalists fly economy- or worse Southwest lol.
People who cannot afford your product are not your audience, it is okay to be elitist.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Neth... it looks like the newspaper industry in the Netherlands is having similar problems to that industry in other countries:
> The number of national daily newspapers in the Netherlands was 108 in 1950, 38 in 1965, 10 in the 2010s, 9 since March 2020, and 8 since March 2021.
Yes this is basically the result of two pretty terrible Belgian media conglomerates buying everything up and combining it into one pulpy slop. The government let it all happen.
Are you sure they’ve always been funded by subscribers? Things like classified ads used to be a core money maker for newspapers and the internet destroyed that market. Then the ad market got turned upside down by the internet too (though interestingly paper ads still attract higher rates!). Very few newspapers have actually thrived directly from subscriber revenue.
Not exactly they've always been co-funded by ads too. We've even had free newspapers in the Netherlands that were given it for free purely funded by ads. They tended to be light though. Like the spits and metro papers that are handed out at train stations. I don't think either exists anymore, I don't live there anymore but I didn't see them last time. Probably because everyone now has a smartphone.