The settling of the US involved the creation of many, many small town newspapers. These weren't created at random but created by the most influential families of the towns, to sell the town itself and the maintain the influence of the family. Radio and TV were free like website from the start, of course (with paid cable coming much later). High end magazines survived the rise of TV and radio because their audience was higher quality.

So the audience has been the product for a long, long time and paying or not paying made little difference.