People never paid for news really. If you're thinking of the days when you had to pay 25 cents for a newspaper at the convenience store, that didn't come even close to the cost of running a newspaper in those days. Your quarter only covered (maybe) the cost of the paper and printing it. These days, we don't need paper, and running a web service is probably cheaper per-reader than physical paper.

Newspapers got the bulk of their funding from advertising back then, just as they do now.