I’m sure it’s for one of two reasons:
They started dying out twenty or twenty five years ago, and within a decade they were all but gone. Haven’t seen them seved like this for years, but they did taste better that way.
I hate to say something like this in GQ, but I heard somewhere (Good Eats, maybe?) that it was because the ink used in newsprint is not considered food grade.
Ummmm ink
A bit of ink is not exactly harmful.
Old newspapers are pretty available, always have been. Not likely.
As a point of reference, the EPA in the US banned lead in ink in 1985.
Health and Safety Nazis. Once the trend started for standardized materials for food containment, newspapered F&C were doomed. Now you have to have paper or whathaveyou with a print-free side towards the food, among other requirements.
You may pine for them romantically and with rose-tinted taste buds, but I have no recollection of them this way, and my only reaction is ‘ewwwwwwwww’.
Regulation of materials that come in contact with food (e.g. ink), or the decline of journalistic standards brought on by the growth of tabloids in the 80s. Neither are good for one’s system
When’s the earliest and latest you can recall eating fish/chips out of newspapers? Might help to pin this down.
I remember eating fish and chips out of a newspaper - however there was always a plain brown paper wrapper directly against the fish and chips.
Hmm, they still do put fish & chips in newspapers around here, but yes, they do put the food itself on plain white paper, but they always did.
If you really think that it taste better that way, can’t you wrap it in newspaper yourself?
How long is “always?”
‘Always’ is before 1958 in my case.
Cite: Defunct Fish & Chip shop formerly situated at No. 1, Cunliffe Road, South Shore, Blackpool, Lancashire.
My partner now confirms similar white paper experiences were available at a Fish & Chip shop in Bissell Street, Quinton, Birmingham during the same era.
Does the battered & fried fish (in England) normally have the skin on? Or was my first (& last) experience an exceptional case?
Depends. Some places will have it on, others will be skinless. I admit I’m no great fan of the texture of the skin, but as long as it’s still attached to the batter I’ll eat it. Even if you hate it, just eat the flesh of the fish, pick out the skin (probably in one or a few pieces), and eat the batter.
I last had Fish and Chips in England in 1989 and it was wrapped in newspaper.
I’m a bit sad to hear it’s no longer done that way.
Heavens, I’m SURE it would have been illegal by then. I seem to recall some law on health grounds happening in the early 1980s. Obviously, however, you have lived to tell the tale. Wow, you found a renegade chip shop. 
I want chips now. And fish, and probably HP sauce.