It sounds like it's something involved in your privacy settings. Despite Facebook's laughable reputation for user privacy, it actually does have a pretty robust set of settings for managing who can see your stuff.

I haven't used them in a while, but I'm guessing this has to do with the fact that either the newspaper is a public page, or that the people trying to view your comments are not your friends.

In the top right of your FB screen there should be an icon of a little lock- if you click on it you should see a message saying "Who Can See My Stuff?" I'm guessing the solution is somewhere in there.