The Paperboy Didn’t Do It

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?

~ 1 Corinthians 1:20

The paperboy didn’t do it, although he was implicated. His ink-stained hands were all the evidence they had at the time. But it wasn’t the paperboy who killed the daily newspaper.

I am greatly relieved to know this. I was a paperboy. The inked creases of my hands lent credibility to the old axiom that printer’s ink courses through the veins of a real newspaperman. I wanted to be one of them.

Most kids get a paper route to earn money. A few of us, inspired by intrepid reporters in the movies making the world a better place, wanted a part in the crusade. The paperboy was the last piece of a vast machine to inform the public. In the 1960s, it was his job to get the paper on the front step, before the evening newscasts, while it was fresh, when it was still news.

The newspaper didn’t always make it to the front step. A 32-page edition was most likely to land near it when tossed from a moving bicycle. We tucked newspapers behind the storm door when the weather was poor. We collected cash payments from our customers on Friday. We learned to prop a foot against the screen door before knocking to keep the watchdogs contained. In winter we warmed our hands by cupping the Christmas lights. Hands that were still numb were scoops for the loose change in our pockets. The customer could pick his own change if he was a cheapskate.

I was also a journalist for a time who survived college training as rigorous as a bicycle paper route in a snowstorm. We were not to use cliches, which only revealed mediocrity in writing, or adjectives without attribution. We were to be objective. Never, ever (outside of a direct quote) use an exclamation point. That would be like sticking a thumb in the reader’s eye or laughing at your own joke. Do not become part of the story. Follow the rules of grammar.

A curious last class before graduation proffered that newspapers would have to adapt to survive. Broadcast journalism was already the primary news source for many in the 1970s. The newspaper industry relied on a workforce of mostly children to get the finished product to the customer on time and in good condition. It couldn’t last.

There was adaption. The daily newspaper that survives today usually arrives on a glass surface. In the digital age we prefer social media to print, where, according to Reuters, one of the last surviving global news organizations, “one can find news to reflect one’s already formed and unblinking opinion.” In an age requiring an average intellect to sort endless streams of information and misinformation, we created an artificial one.

No, the paperboy didn’t kill the daily newspaper.