I actually pay very little attention to sharpness tests. I use the newspaper test myself just a sort of quality-control check for my own sharpening efforts.
It seems like everytime you read a knife review, the author has to come up with some newer, better, grander superlative to describe the edge. First there was "sharp." Then came "nicely sharp." That was followed by "very sharp." Then started more functional descriptions like "shaving sharp" and "razor sharp." These gave way to more animate terms such as "hair-poppin' sharp." And then we started to appeal to emotions like "scary sharp", "frighteningly sharp," et cetra. Each generation of knife review articles seems to have to trump the last in the terms it uses to express the edge.
Have knife makers really learned to make edges this much sharper?
It seems to me that we're sharpening our prose more than our knives.
I think for my next review, I'll trump them all by declaring the edge "super-califragilistic-expialadosious sharp!" Top that!
The problem with all of these tests and terms is that they're all quite subjective and quite qualitative.
One reason I like the newspaper test is that the technique, while not entirely subjective, is not that difficult and the material used, newpaper, is fairly consistent at least within the US and, in fact, over most of the world (Yes, you have to exclude the Financial Times.)
In researching this issue, I've discovered that there are objective and quantitative tests for edge sharpness, but that they require sophisticated laboratory equipment.