This was a real issue with my wife. She missed several big sales at the local department store. Flower Day at our Farmer's Market happened without her this year. Newspaper coupons that would have saved her money at the supermarket went unclipped. I am convinced that this is why newspapers need not worry about being extinct.
Advertising is more than just ads.
Coupons are currency of sorts. Advertising is just as much news as a bylined story. My household was decidedly uninformed about things that were important to us because, online, we had no idea what was commercially happening around us. There's no getting around the fact that reading news online is cumbersome. You have to sit down at a computer, log on to the Net and click and scroll and sit in a chair not nearly as comfortable as the easy chair out in the family room.