Sure, but then that meant you probably bought the odd single issue, or maybe for an extended period until you found a job. You didn't buy a subscription for the sole purpose of looking at the classifieds.
You bought a subscription in part for the value of one or more sections, but also because culturally everyone else did too, and once you have it you probably found something interesting. Few people ever read everything in the paper front to back regularly. That is why both then and now headlines were important.