What is done with the assumedly large quantity of day-old newspapers that aren’t sold? Are they available for sale at a cheaper price? I can see that in many cases a person reading yesterdays news on a regular basis would not be terribly affected, particularly for features, editorials, even sports.
WAG: They’re sold back to the newspaper, then to the paper company, and recycled. I think I saw paperboys bringing unsold papers back to the newspaper in a movie once.
Say you’re Joe Newstand Owner.
The Local Times comes by and drops off 100 copies of the fishwrap for you.
During the day, you sell 85 of them.
The next morning, the Local Times comes back and sees that you have 15 copies left. They assume you sold 85. They collect the money for the 85 copies (or adjust your bill) and take the 15 old ones back with them.
Off to the recycling bin with those.
News stand owners also have to razor out a portion of the front page before returning them- this prevents, in theory, others from selling the paper. It’s also a bit of a tallying mechanism.
Same thing is done with magazines and books that are recalled because of price changes, ect.
Several years ago I worked at a bookstore. The way it worked was that we had to save the front page of the unsold newspapers. When the next papers were delivered we gave back the frontpages and our monthly bill was credited. We just recycled the remainder of the papers.
and then…
our local paper still sells copies of old newspapers, at ten cents per section or some standard price for the Sunday want ads (I imagine a steady good seller).