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Do you remember the paperboy?

These days, you're more likely to get your paper from an adult in car, instead of a kid on a bike.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published May 4, 2006

It's an image as American as apple pie, but the paperboy has gone the way of the milkman.

Today's papers usually arrive by anonymous drive-and-toss. For reasons including the demise of afternoon papers, a shift to centralized distribution and earlier delivery deadlines, adults in cars make up 81 percent of the country's newspaper carriers.

"I don't know who delivers my papers," said Stacey Rufe of Glen Allen, Va., lamenting the disconnect she has with her Washington Post carrier. "When I was growing up, our carrier was my friend Mike and his brothers. If you had a problem, you called Mike."

As recently as 1994, more than half of newspaper carriers - 57 percent - were younger than 18, often neighborhood kids, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Like most papers, the St. Petersburg Times uses adult independent contractors. Youth carriers were last used at the Times in the mid 1970s.

As the job moved into the hands of grown-up independent contractors, who don't come to the door for payment, many bemoan the lost sense of community in which the paperboy played a unique role. Also lost is an opportunity that gave children as young as 10 valuable business skills.

If you weren't a paperboy or papergirl, your sibling, parent or friend was. And if you didn't do it, you subbed for your brother when he went to Scout camp. Parents, more likely than not, helped - driving on bad-weather days or helping stuff inserts into the Sunday papers.

Some former paperboys recall loving the responsibility and sense of pride; others hated the early mornings and collecting from stingy subscribers.

"It was a great first job because I had to manage for myself," said George Rohling, 41, who delivered the (Spokane, Wash.) Spokesman-Review in the 1970s. Like most paperboys, Rohling was paid according to how many papers he delivered, and he collected payments each week. "I wasn't standing at a register, asking if they want fries."

President Harry S. Truman, actors John Wayne and Bob Hope and baseball star Willie Mays had paper routes when they were young. So did TV journalist Tom Brokaw, cartoon great Walt Disney and investment whiz Warren Buffett.

Teens and tweens really started delivering America's papers in the postwar era, NAA vice president John Murray said.

Boys had hawked newspapers on city street corners, and as customers moved to the suburbs, it was a natural fit.

"They were appealing, tenacious and would work in a small window of time," Murray said. In return, delivering papers rewarded kids "relatively speaking, handsomely."

In the 1950s, Henry Petroski earned the then-lucrative sum of $20 a week delivering the Long Island Press each afternoon and Sunday morning. The job taught him how to deal with people and money and how to fold a paper.

"It wasn't that easy; the first few times the paper would open in the air and would fall apart," said Petroski, now a Duke University professor and author of a memoir, Paperboy: Confessions of a Future Engineer.

"By learning what didn't work, you learn eventually what not to do more than the secret of doing it right."

Now Petroski receives his Durham Herald-Sun each day from an adult driving a car. It's not the same, particularly when it rains.

"When I was a paperboy we would do what we called 'doorknob,' " he said.

"You would walk up to the door and put the paper in the storm door. Here, it's just a yellow plastic bag at the bottom of the driveway."

Rufe, 34, never knows where to expect her paper, or even what paper she'll get.

"Today (the paper) was on the bottom of our steps, usually it's on the driveway, sometimes it's in the paper box," said the part-time lawyer. She said she has received the Financial Times, theNew York Times and the Korean Times, many times in lieu of her preferred Post.

Yes, she can call the Post to complain, but "if I knew who my carrier was, I could call him," she said.

At least one paper is bucking the trend. Since December, the Sun in Lowell, Mass., has shifted about 2,000 papers from adult routes to youth carriers.

"It's strengthening everything all the way around," circulation vice president Michael Sheehan said. Routes grow future newspaper readers, he said, while young carriers provide better service and create customer loyalty. Sun paperboy Joseph "J.J." Polcari, 15, is learning about the value of good service. A five-year veteran of deliveringSun papers, he was recently named carrier of the week.

"If you treat people well, they give you good tips," said Polcari, who earns about $40 a week. Delivering 20 papers takes only 20 minutes each day, he said, thanks to his bike.

And the work is paying off: His mother, Debbie, said J.J. is saving for a car and has enough for insurance.

Yet this return to youth carriers is an alternative not open to many morning papers. In Bloomington, Ill., the Pantagraph employs about 200 young people in its carrier force of 480.

Circulation director Bill Hertter says it's tough these days to find teens willing to deliver the morning paper by 6 a.m. every day.

"Money is too available," he said. "Why would they want another five, 10 bucks when they have everything?"

[Last modified May 4, 2006, 08:21:42]