Stephanie Salter

By Stephanie Salter
CNHI News Service

The schools were closed, an office colleague already had called to say she couldn’t get out of her snow-bound corner of Clay County, and another coworker (and neighbor) had offered me a ride downtown in her Jeep.

Standing at my kitchen window, I strained to see if any tire tracks marked my now-hidden driveway or if a set of footprints crossed the unshoveled snow above my buried sidewalk.

“I’ll bet they couldn’t get to me this morning,” I mumbled, but opened the front door to scope out the porch stoop.

Oh, me of little faith.

There, in its customary back corner of the porch, in its usual plastic bag secured with a rubber band, was my morning newspaper. My carriers, a husband-wife team, had negotiated the pre-dawn ice and snow to deliver my paper as though it was just another balmy day in paradise. They always do.

My esteem for my carriers — and for the more than 100 regular carriers who deliver the Tribune-Star, The New York Times, The Indianapolis Star and several other papers in this nine-county circulation area — is almost boundless.

The antithesis of a morning person, someone who gets her best sleep between 5 and 8 a.m., I consider rising in the cold, dark wee hours nothing short of torture. But that is exactly what is required of newspaper carriers.

Every single morning, they get up when most of the world is in dreamland, drive to their designated drop-off spot, load their routes’ papers into their vans or cars, and begin personal delivery to scores of dark houses, apartment buildings and businesses. Some carriers leave home shortly after midnight to get their bundles as soon as they come off the presses.

The carriers’ last deadline for delivery is 6 a.m. Anything after that is considered the same as a missed paper. At the Tribune-Star, carriers are docked $1 for every missed or wet paper that is reported against them.

Like print journalism, itself, hand delivering a newspaper is, indeed, an antiquated system. Some smaller papers have resorted to delivering their hard copy via U.S. Postal Service, an answer of sorts, but it sure cuts down (even further) on the timeliness of the news.

Some larger papers have reduced the number of days they produce a paper-paper, let alone deliver it to people’s homes. The Internet, as we all know, is slowly rendering extinct a folded, multi-section newspaper that is tossed seven days a week onto a porch or slipped into a special tube.

The day is coming — perhaps before I can retire — when hard-copy newspapers and their same-day home delivery will go the way of Linotype machines and five-star editions.

About 30 years ago, almost all subscription newspapers were delivered by kids, boys and girls on bikes or foot, who learned the basics of business and a great work ethic via their morning or afternoon paper routes. Over the decades, though, as production processes (and kids) changed, those 800,000 young people’s jobs slowly morphed into adult jobs.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, as late as 1994, the majority of newspaper carriers — 57 percent — was still made up of people under the age of 18. Today, kid carriers make up less than 20 percent of all carriers, whose numbers have shrunk to about a quarter of a million.

On days like this past snowy Thursday, I marvel that anyone still wants to make a living — or, more common, supplement his or her income — by hand-delivering newspapers. Traveling ahead of the snow plows in the dark, trying to negotiate long, unshoveled driveways and slippery sidewalks or porch steps, is tricky business.

And it isn’t as though carriers can count on the kind of job security and benefits other outdoor service providers, such as postal or parcel delivery workers and trash collectors, can. Newspaper carriers are independent contractors, not employees of the papers they deliver. At the Tribune-Star, as with many papers, carriers must buy their own bags and rubber bands, maintain their own vehicles and assume liability for safe delivery of every paper on their route.

Tribune-Star marketing director Courtney Zellars, who also directs circulation, said carriers can earn from $200 to $1,000 per month, depending on the size of their routes. The tough economy, she said, has bolstered the number of folks who want to secure paper routes, which has led to less turnover among their ranks.

During the Christmas holidays, many carriers receive tips from their customers. Year ’round, perhaps one-third of our subscribers include a carrier tip with their regular payment, according to Kim Wilkerson in the Tribune-Star business office.

Occasionally, people call our circulation office to compliment a carrier. More often, the calls are complaints or reports of missed (or stolen) or wet papers, or of papers that fell short or wide of their customary spot.

Needless to say, when the weather is extreme, the chance for those complaints rises. The Tribune-Star and other papers that our area carriers deliver urge people to try to get as much of their routes filled as they can, but no one is to endanger life, limb or vehicle.

In the four-plus years my carriers have been delivering my paper, I cannot remember a single missed day. The paper was late, however, once.

About 7:30 a.m., just as I was making my morning coffee, I was surprised to see the wife-half of the team drive up alone and head for my doorstep. I opened the door to say hi, but the first thing out of her mouth was an apology for the delay. Her husband had gone into the emergency room mid-route and finally had been admitted to the hospital. When she knew he was stable, she had finished up, and I was the last delivery.

After she drove away, I thought about how the newspaper delivery business has changed since I was a kid. Now, it’s the carriers who teach the rest of us what a work ethic means.

Stephanie Salter writes for The Tribune Star in Terre Haute, Ind. CNHI News Service distributes her column.