UK Magazine: The strange decline of the paperboy

I guess newspapers in England aren't having the same problems we are, they can't find enough delivery people to throw papers ...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7431224.stm

 

Shoot, she gets up at 6:15? Must be nice to have a print time that late.

That's why kids don't throw papers anymore. Having them pick up papers at 1 a.m. would be considered child abuse.

 

Did you know: England, Wales and Scotland combined are smaller than Michigan.

 

£15 for delivering papers? When I was a paper boy, I was lucky to get half that a week...

 

It's strange that children don't want to work at 5 a.m. for almost nothing?

 

I have some knowledge about the situation. I throw a country route after I get off work for extra money. Takes me less than three hours and I get $1500 a month. (More than what I make working for the paper after taxes, health insurance, and a substantial 401K installment to make up for a stupid former indifference to retirement.) It sucks paying for gas every other night, but I can write those miles off my taxes. That's the beauty of it.

The press starts at midnight and the paper wants all deliveries done by 5 a.m. That's impossible for a kid in school, on a bike, in the dark. In summertime, it gets daylight a lot earlier and kids are out of school, so that would be a better time to take a route, but only on a temporary basis. It would have to be subcontracted out by a carrier, because most papers won't hire kids anymore.

The death of the PM paper has also contributed to the demise of the old-school paperboy.

 

If it wasn't for PETA protests, we could solve this problem in a heartbeat.

 

Interesting piece on this in the Times today, looking at it from the American side. Two takeaways:

And back in the 1970s....

Opinion | Night Falls on News Carriers

 

According to the Economist subscriptions at leading newspapers in Great Britain have fallen about 50% since 2002.

Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail’s “conductor”, passes the baton

If that is true of the newspaper industry in Great Britain general then routes have only half the paying customers that they previously had and incomes have declined. If routes have been consolidated in order to maintain incomes then the carrier had to pedal twice as far to achieve the same income.

Also, have afternoon newspapers disappeared in Great Britain, and for that matter Canada, as they have in the United States?

 

Ten years later, are you still doing it? Or when did you give it up?

 

I gave it up right about the time when half of what I was making was going in my gas tank. The dwindling customer count had a lot to do with it as well. I could work half the hours driving a forklift on a side hustle and still take home more money.