I let my mind wander when I took this photo. My first job ever was a paperboy. That can be hard work if you don’t like riding a bike and carrying a big sack over each shoulder and having full baskets on each side. But I loved riding bikes, and I was young and foolish and didn’t know how much my back would hurt from that and years of abuse after it with heavy loads.
That was the way it was done when I was growing up. Not some people in a car, whipping them out of the window. We used to have paper boxes that were attached to mailboxes. Well, in full disclosure, my mom did feel bad for me a few times when the snow was deep and got the car out and helped me with rounds. But an inch or two on the roads was passable on a bike. It was just COLD.
Really, I was thinking how much longer an image of a paper sitting on a driveway or sidewalk will be around? I’ve had some talks with people who have been in the industry and that day doesn’t seem far off as it once did. The pace of change keeps rolling along. To me it’s a symbol of what this country has become. We don’t make squat anymore.
While the flow of information, opinions, images, videos fly around at the speed of light. It also does it in a very superficial way in some cases. There used to be a tabloid rag called the National Enquirer. A totally sensationalist publication. Extreme headlines and stories. A mix of controversy, titillation, and fantasies all rolled into a print publication. Now people want that in their hourly updates and that it to be fresh trash every few minutes at the most.
Not only that, think of what you’re missing. The other day I found the clipping of my mother’s mother, wedding announcement from an old local paper. My kids will find clippings of me playing little league baseball and our wedding announcements. And pictures. My parents and my generation may be the last to print out photos in any great quantity or have newspaper clippings to pass to the next generation.
Well, there is no such thing as a big daily anymore. And your local paper probably has disappeared years ago or is a shell of itself and will fall. Even the big ones have had huge print circulation losses. But in some ways are more read now than in the past with the online efforts some have undertaken. Not in every case though.
That is the issue. How does the industry make money when things change so rapidly in the online world. Only time will tell as technology, tools and trends keep changing. I do miss the days of kids delivering them on bikes. The guy in the old car doesn’t slow down to wave.
Really, I have no worries. I mean you’re always going to need newspapers if you live in Maryland and enjoy eating crabs, right? And that is a lot of people, so I guess I’m safe for a little while.
I do have a prediction for our local market. The Baltimore Sun will cease print within this decade even though they are owned by Sinclair. And I think there is a decent chance The Washington Post will cease when commercial printing along with their own cost more than its worth. And that day will certainly be within the next decade.
My guess is the last day the last press is taken offline and there are no more newspapers, the Internet will go DOWN. That would be Karma. Then I could tell my grandchildren why what I did for 5 decades was relevant.
