Print news media was dying for decades before online media came online, and was almost entirely paid for by ads (many local publications were and are free of charge, and many of the paid ones charged primarily to have paid circulation numbers and shape the socioeconomic demographics of their audience, both of which were and are mechanisms to boost advertising revenue.)
It may not have been the case in Europe; the decline in circulation in the print media in the US was widely discussed as long trend in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and attributed to a number of factors, most notably (but not exclusively) the wave of mergers and associated cuts in local newsrooms and non-wire-service content in the preceding couple of decades.
