Recalling an earlier era when newspapers still mattered

Phillip Charlier recalls an earlier era when newspapers were still king. He writes:

"Kids growing up today won't have the same relationship with newspapers as we had. I started in the newspaper distribution business when I was 8 years old helping an older friend who had a neighborhood paper-run. We would ride around on our bicycles, delivering to subscribers.


When I was twelve, I would catch the train to Eagle Junction, pick a quota of papers up from the 'Newsagent' and sell them to afternoon commuters on the station platform. Being a junction, a lot of people got off to change trains there. By the time I reached high school, I had graduated to the Dawson Road intersection which was the prime position to catch morning commuter traffic feeding into the city from the outer suburbs.

Getting up at 4am, I would arrive at the Newsagency by 4:30 to help the agent prepare for delivery. The agent fed the flat papers into the rolling machine mechanically. When the box was ready to take it's last newspaper, I would slide it out with one hand while sliding the next empty box in with the other. You had to be in sync with the machine. I loaded the van with the newspapers and when we finished, the agent would drop me off with my quota of 60 newspapers at 5:00 am. Eventually I learned to operate the rolling machine and all the finer points of adjustment. They were antiquated devices of Victorian era technology with spindles, knobs to calibrate for newspaper size and thickness, and a lot of whirring and clacking sounds.


In my first year of university and in another town, having mastered the antiquated, but not yet obsolete technology of the newspaper rolling machine, I got up at 3:00am weekdays to drive a newsagent's van to the printers to pick up the fresh, and literally hot-off-the-press Morning Bulletin. By 4:00am I had a full load rolled and ready for the agent's first delivery run. While he was driving around tossing the news into peoples front yards, I rolled and stacked the broadsheets with the masthead furled on the outside ready for the next run.



At 9 a.m. I was in journalism class with a veteran reporter injecting wry cynicism into weekly lectures. I could smell the newsprint and feel it in my fingerprints. It was smudged all over me.

These new forms of distribution don't have the smell and feel of the physical form but those who never knew it won't miss it. Personally, I think the newspaper will continue to exist but only for those who get with the times, integrate with the new distribution models, and form an interactive community among the readers and writers of the publication. Newspapers today have to be more than a source of the latest news because consumers today already have the latest news from whichever latest device."


Viva la Revolution!