What's Happened to the Bicycling Paper Boy?

I was biking to work this morning as I heard what sounded that like Satan’s lawnmower coming up behind me. As I turned to look over my left shoulder, an old beat up Toyota (or other Japanese made) two-door car without the muffler came past. The real strange thing happened a few moments later, as out the passenger side window flew what I first thought was a large piece of trash. “Did they just try to throw garbage at me?” I thought, but as I rolled past the refuse in question I found that it was actually the morning newspaper wrapped up in the plastic bag that is common now. It was still really odd though. I’ve been riding this same route three years now and this was the first time I had ever seen a newspaper delivery person. Why today?

It also brought up a larger question/thought in my head – when did the newspaper stop being delivered by bicycle? I grew up in the country so for me the delivery was always done by car, but I thought (and maybe this was a wishful thought) that in the city, especially the suburbs, that older kids would still deliver the newspaper by bike.

Watching the beat up car go down the street away from me, I possibly saw one contributing factor. Not every house was getting a paper. It seemed to be on average maybe every fifth house. This sporadic delivery would of course mean longer routes for the delivery person, possibly too far of a distance or too much time to do by bicycle. Electronic media and the poor economy can probably be to blame, but still it’s just sad. A morning paper delivered by a kid on bike has a good wholesome feeling to it. You know, that the paper got there from a good hardworking wipper-snapper kid that is not only is so responsible to be working hard at his first job, but is also using sweat and brawn to get that paper there. Getting the paper delivered from some seedy looking guy in a loud, barely operating 2-door beater of a car just doesn’t have the same warm fuzzies to it.

More importantly, how will kids of today and the future even understand the premise behind the classic Nintendo game?

Look! It's the seedy looking paper delivery man of today working on his beater of a car!