True, it's relatively expensive. Cost of the contests is 200-250 Steem, cost of printing depends on the country, here it would be approx 3-3,5 steem per newspaper.

It's not about printing and distributing 10 000 units though. It's about printing 2-3 by each user who would like to promote it. Based on my previous week income I could print 20 newspapers if I would sacrifice 25% of my income for promotion.

Steemit blogs ad/or websites out of Steem platform are nice, informative and doesn't cost anything but does it really have range out of our community and potential to get more users? I would say yes, but in the group of people already interested in cryptocurrencies. By sharing the paper version of newspaper we have a chance to interest people who have never heard about cryptocurrencies or steemit.
Also, electronic version of the newspaper is, in my opinion, more attractive for the average user. It's easier to share it on social media, it's more "visual", eye-catching.

Finally, if we would cut the contests and focus on collecting most interesting content and sharing it in one place, the information will be centralized on the website, it will not shared with the others in the post pinned in multiple communities in every week summary + new edition of the contest. That way it still remains invisible for many users.

but if it will be the website out of the steemit instead of newspaper, it will not have such a positive impact for activity in the group and the possibilities to use it as the promotion out of the platform will be lower as well. There is plenty of websites dedicated to cryptocurrency and people who didn't hear about crypto before, don't visit it.
If it would be the website understood as the
community on steemit, but without contests and PDF newspaper, the integration between the groups will not be achieved on the same level. Here @pennsif probably already made all what can be done so there would be no need to make me other similar project. Also, getting people from outside would be difficult if we will keep it only inside the platform.

It would be great to make the newspaper and co-work with @pennsif to include steemit news there (I'll gladly use the experience and knowledge of another user too, I'm very opened to make this project together), although I was thinking about different content mostly.
I think it would be great to focus on publications not steem related. Regular journalism to show to the other people that steem is worth visiting, reading and creating here account because it can be as informative as National Geographic or New York Times sometimes.

I'll try to explain it on the example:

Example 1.
There is Jose. Jose have never heard about the cryptocurrency, so he doesn't have the smallest chance to enter the website with info about steemit or steemit community with some activity summary. He is going to his language school, waiting for the lesson to start and at reception he sees Steemit newspaper. He reads interesting articles about, let's say, news in Pakistan, some local artist from Ghana and best place to visit in Venezuela. Every time under the post he reads it was published on steemit and then in the very same newspaper he reads that he can create the account there, read such an interesting things for free and even earn extra cash by publishing something on his own. Jose after coming back home creates the account.

Example 2.
Eva doesnt know anything about Cryptocurrency. She has seen some links from steemit shared by her friends but the design of the website, some Chinese and Korean posts on the main page and multiple options she doesn't understand scared her. Then someone sends her the newspaper in pdf where she already has selected best articles in a form she knows well. It makes her feel comfortable with exploring the content. In the very same newspaper, after article about Maradona and other with some beauty tips, she gets the information how to register and start the adventure. Suddenly it's not so terrifying and she gives it a try.