By ARTHUR VIDRO
By Arthur Vidro
Do kids today read print newspapers?
When I was a kid, we sure did read them. We even used Silly Putty to make copies of the Sunday funnies.
Back then we didn’t call them “print” newspapers. There was no other kind. They were just newspapers.
Perhaps today’s adults – at least those born in the computer age – read fewer newspapers because they never developed the habit as children.
To battle declining sales, newspapers ought to go after children. Once they develop the habit of reading print newspapers, they will continue to do so as adults.
I hate calling them “print” newspapers. To me they are “real” newspapers.
Real newspapers have served many functions in society.
For instance, they drew kids into the workforce.
Remember those old movies with kids at every other corner hawking newspapers at passersby? That really happened.
During the 1930s, my Uncle Nat helped the family by selling newspapers in their Coney Island section of Brooklyn. He began as a preteen.
Back then the area (part of New York City) had at least seven daily newspapers: the Times, the Daily News, the Post (those three are still with us), plus the Herald-Tribune, the Sun, the World-Telegram, and the Brooklyn Eagle. I suspect other papers competed there too.
Hey, along with radio (expensive then), that’s how people got their news. Every major city had more than one newspaper. You had morning editions, afternoon editions, and evening editions.
When my uncle was in his eighties and no longer driving, I chauffeured him and my aunt to her doctor one day. I was needed to sort of babysit my uncle, who couldn’t be left alone. He was as gentle and kind as ever but, at least that day, rather childlike. My aunt feared he might mindlessly wander off.
My uncle knew who I was but struggled to understand why we were there. His brain wasn’t quite clicking. Until, in the waiting room, he noticed a page in a magazine I was reading. He pointed at it and excitedly said, “I did that!”
It was a picture of a kid hawking newspapers in the 1930s.
I had never heard of my uncle’s newspaper-selling days. I wasn’t sure he was remembering correctly. When my aunt returned from the exam room, she confirmed that Uncle Nat had sold newspapers in Coney Island, where he grew up.
That picture of a kid selling newspapers brought my real uncle to the surface, instead of the confused old man who had taken his place that day.
As a kid in the 1970s, I too had a small role in the newspaper world. At ages 10 and 11, I was the substitute paper boy for the two daily newspapers covering our neighborhood. When the regular paper boy went on vacation or fell ill (or once, as it happened, got injured), he would pay me to handle the route. That included collecting money weekly at each customer’s door. One house fell four weeks behind in payments, because nobody had been home when collection attempts were made.
Collecting money taught children fiscal responsibilities. We learned to keep a careful record of how much each subscriber owed, and to record each payment as it was made, before walking away. If paid with a dollar bill, we provided correct change.
It was good training for, years later, balancing a checkbook and making a budget. Being a paper boy or girl also taught us time management. I wonder how many kids learn those skills today.
It was a different world back then. Adults did not drive around slinging plastic-bound papers into snowbanks or onto rain-drenched lawns. Instead, the paper boy – a few paper girls were starting to make the scene, too – would put each paper where that customer preferred it.
Sometimes it was sandwiched between the screen door and the front door. Some were left at a side or rear door. Or in the mailbox. Or under a doormat. One person wanted the paper put into a lidded milk box on the porch. (Try asking for such personalized service today!)
We didn’t smother the papers in plastic. We didn’t throw the papers.
The ten-cent paper was an afternoon paper; the five-cent paper, I don’t remember. But they both got delivered first thing after school.
Some of the Sunday paper sections (including the funnies) arrived a couple days early. Then on Sunday morning we’d assemble the papers and deliver them.
If a customer would be away and didn’t want papers to pile up, they would tell us, face to face, and we would hold back their papers until they returned.
Nowadays the face-to-face element of newspaper delivery is gone. Payment is made by credit card or check. Perhaps that’s more efficient, but it’s also more dehumanizing. That face-to-face element was healthy for a child in developing social skills. And probably healthy for adults as well.
Nowadays my uncle’s parents might have been arrested for leaving him alone on the street to sell newspapers. My own parents might have gotten in trouble today for leaving 10-year-old me to deliver newspapers unsupervised.
But we were responsible. If you weren’t responsible, you weren’t a paper boy or girl. Or you didn’t last.
Paper boys and girls didn’t require babysitters. We were the babysitters.
Perhaps someday nobody will read real newspapers anymore, and they will cease being published.
When that day comes, if I am still around (and I’m not sure I’d want to be), I will mourn.
Arthur Vidro’s latest short story, “Which Casino?” appears in the November 2020 issue of Mystery Weekly Magazine.
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