It's not much good for stationery. It's okay for padding your breakables when you move, but styrofoam peanuts are better. Toilet tissue is much more absorbent.
Television is much more immediate and less demanding than newsprint.
They'll dutifully believe whatever they're told, pickup truck explosions and Food Lion notwithstanding. But a newspaper has traditionally had a more discriminating clientele. Unless one buys it just for the coupons, it is an archive of the day's events, a snapshot of history in the making. It's a portable view of the world that day, the cement before it sets, the mold before it hardens. The power of the printed word endures.