A lot of people are getting paper newsletter in the mail, and I don't see
any reason why the same kind of thing would not work well using LISTSERV.
As a matter of  fact it has been done by many  people successfully. It is
an  old and  time  tried form  of  communication where,  at  least in  my
experience, the only challenges are  technological (and 140k is certainly
no problem, you'd have to add a  zero to make it "interesting" :-) ). The
reason one would  want to use e-mail rather than  usenet are very similar
to the reasons why one subscribes to a newspaper to get it delivered home
every day, instead of going to read it at the library for free. On top of
that there's the fact that many  people don't have the necessary tools to
access usenet conveniently and with good performance and reliability. And
if someone (say, a competitor) doesn't  like your newsletter, gee, he can
just cancel it globally and there's nothing you can do about it.
 
  Eric