When an excuse is worse than none

Coming back from China this weekend (we went there for holidays this time), I asked the flight attendant for some Japanese newspapers. After a long time, she came back and said "sorry, we did not get this far back, so now we are out of newspapers".
Since we were sitting in the back of the plane, I did not get a paper (although to her credit she did bring some papers later - much later). But what kind of excuse is "we did not care enough to keep a newspaper for you"? If you think about it (and you have plenty of time to do that during even a short flight), she was not making an excuse at all. Why do they have to start handing out the newspapers in front in economy class, anyway? There is nothing in the construction of the airplane that says they have to do that.
Of course, I was flying Northwest. It's a wonder that airline still exists, but it is even more of a wonder that I keep taking their flights. Every time I wonder how the service can worsen. And the prices are not that good. I wonder how many dollars difference it is to make me actually chose, say, ANA? One of these days, Northwest and me will find out.