This could be one of the more banal questions you hear today, but are newspapers in the States really delivered by kids on bikes throwing them at your front door?
I’ve always figured this was just some sort of artistic license on the part of film makers, but I’m starting to wonder.
In our city it used to be that way. My brother took over for a week for some friends of ours in the middle of winter back in the 1970s. He hated it so much.
Now, usually people of driving age, 18 or over, deliver the snewspaper in the wee hours of the morning and it doesn’t land on your doorstep, it’s somewhere in your driveway but Lord knows where.
I quit getting the news paper, I just read it on line. 
That used to be quite common, particularly for the afternoon newspapers. Now most of the afternoon newspapers have disappeared, and there is only a morning newspaper in many areas.
As techchick68 stated, now they’re usually delivered by an adult driving through the neighborhood throwing them out the car window during the wee hours of the morning. (Roughly 6 AM in my neighborhood — too dark for parents to feel secure about having their kids out on the streets alone delivering papers in most areas during these not-so-innocent times, unfortunately.)
The likely proximity of the delivered newspaper to one’s porch, I’ve determined through complex statistical analysis, directly correlates to the size of the Christmas tip one gives to the paperboy. Although the paperboy in my neighborhood is actually a 50 year old couple who drive around the neighborhood at 5 a.m.
I used to help my brother deliver papers many years ago, but as techchick mentioned, many deliverers are now vehicular, in my neck of the woods at least. Perhaps this is due to increased sizes of delivery areas?
Wish I remember where I saw the article - but in any event, in the 1980s and 90s newspapers realized that it was cheaper, more efficient and more reliable to leave newspaper distribution to adults. As noted above, a big part of the problem was in getting children up to deliver morning newspapers at an hour when it’s healthier for them to be asleep. (IIRC, the only evening newspaper left in a major market is the Seattle Times. The rest either went under (the Washington Star, for example), were absorbed by a morning paper (the Baltimore Evening Sun) or flipped to morning (the New York Post). All too often parents were having to deliver the papers, which made no one happy.
Technology’s made a big difference as well. My NY Times subscription is automatically deducted from my checking account, something that wasn’t possible even fifteen years ago (I remember my dad asking me to ransack the house for for cash to pay the paper boy).
Our local papers treat their carriers as independent contractors, and people under 18 are limited as to the types of employment contracts they can enter into. The papers would rather deal with adults to avoid those contract issues (not to mention those pesky child labor laws).
But the papers are actually thrown at your house? Don’t they walk up the sidewalk and put it in your mailbox?
Not unless it is sent to you through the mail. It is illegal to use the mail box for other reasons than the United States Postal Service. It even says on a mail box you may buy, something in those terms.
I live on a street where the mailboxs are in in one huge box with numbers (not your address just a number) and I use a key much like an apartment complex would use. Suburbs tend to that, no door to door delivery and they have an independent contractor deliver our mail, no mail trucks come through our nieghborhood. (sorry, I am rambling)
Some rural people and those with very long driveways get newspaper delivery and have separate boxes for their newspaper (usually with the newspaper’s name all over it.)
Typically, if you live in a house, a car drives by, throws out the newspaper in some proximity of your yard/driveway and that’s it. But it was about 20-15 years ago when that became the norm. It did used to be the kids delivering the newspaper and they handled the collections as well.
Sorry, you’re a tad out of date–the Times switched to morning a while ago (don’t recall exactly when, since I ignore it whenever possible).
As for throwing the paper at the house, that used to be quite common, and may still be the practice in places. I believe it’s technically illegal to put anything but mail in the mailbox; what I have is a plastic “tube” (actually rectangular) mounted on the porch post. Pretty much of a necessity, given the weather 'round here.
The Buffalo News is still delivered by kids. Big blue Buffalo News boxes are seen on the tree lawns of some houses; kids will gather there after school, grab their bundles, and tow their big blue Buffalo News wagons from house to house.
Kids deliver papers to our building in the afternoon. A van comes and drops them off at the beginning of their routs and presumably picks them up at the end. Our mourning guy I think is an adult, though I’ve never seen him.
Not any more, really. But I delivered newspapers door to door for years - and technically I could have ridden a bike. But the area I lived in was so hilly that I could barely bike it normally, much less carrying who knows how many pounds of newspaper. I loved the people with the little mailbox thingies - especially since most driveways were quaint little hills of their own.
The Seattle Times went to a morning paper about a year ago (sadly, I loved having an afternoon paper).
We had a kid delivering our paper up until a couple years ago. Now it’s an adult who drives the route and tosses the papers more-or-less near the front door. IIRC the switch to adult carriers for us included getting the paper by 6:30 a.m. and it is guaranteed to arrive by 7 a.m.- it used to arrive between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m.
My parents get two papers - one daily, one weekly. The daily was delivered by kids until 6-7 years ago, and the weekly is still delivered by a kid. The daily they get is a morning paper and the weekly is an afternoon edition. They live in a rural area, though, and I suspect the switch happened because there was no kid around who wanted to bike 5 miles a day to deliver 20 papers.
I think another differance between the UK and the US is that not many houses have a separate mail box on the front of the property. Instead mail, newspapers etc are posted through the “letter box” (ie a slot) on the front door. This means that our papers are posted into the house , and usually still by children. They are not allowed to start working before 7 am.
We don’t have a subscription to any newspaper, but many of the local papers send their drivers here. (Perhaps the driver has the wrong address or they are trying to acquire more subscribers)
Either way, the papers, enveloped in their convenient plastic bags, land on the driveway, in the yard, in the field next to our yard, on the side of the road…
I was a child paperboy for years. After a few years off to mature I returned to the employ of the San Diego Union-Tribune as an adult carrier. I did that for several years before moving somewhere with snow - too hard for me to deliver in that! As I recall, subscriptions were down all over, but more for afternoon papers than morning. Most (all?) afternoon deliveries were terminated. Afternoon papers became morning papers, or ceased to exist due to lack of subscribers. Most morning papers have a late edition that’s put out in newsstands - but that’s a pretty limited run.
As to the extinction of child deliverers, again it comes down to money. One adult can deliver by vehicle an area that would take many kids to do. Adults can deliver earlier, and are usually more responsible than kids (there are of course, exceptions to the rule - see Jenna’s carrier). When I threw as a kid, I had about 150 houses in a suburb, and averaged about 80 to 90 papers a day. It took me about two hours each afternoon to do this.
As an adult my route covered about 800 to 900 houses (estimate) and I averaged between 550 and 650 papers per day. This took me about an hour and a half to fold each morning, and an hour and a half to throw - finished before 6:30 each morning.
As far as placement goes, that’s really between the customer and the carrier (paperboy). I delivered in apartment buildings and ground floor condos where I’d have to get out and walk around to deliver papers by hand, but 90% of my route was thrown from the vehicle driving around 45 mph. With practice there’s no reason why any paper carrier can’t get your paper in the middle of your driveway each morning, 20 feet from the street. That’s an easy throw from a car, to either side of the street.
If a customer has additional requests, they should feel free to make them. Lots of customers want their paper on their doorstep. If their driveway goes up near that point, most carriers are happy to do so, as they can usually throw to a doorstep from the car in the driveway, without getting out. Circular driveways are the best, as the carrier doesn’t have to turn around, just drive through. Elderly people or those with disabilities may request that their paper get placed somewhere where they can reach it, a bench, atop a low wall, etcetera. Most carriers are happy to do this if they know the reason for the request.
Keep in mind when making requests that 20% or more of a carriers annual income is from tips (most of that at Christmas). If a carrier makes an effort to do something special for a customer, he (or she) would appreciate a tip- even if it’s small, and a thank you note at year’s end.
Obviously, every carrier is different. Some are nicer than others. Some are professionals who do this as their main or only income. Some are journeymen who try this for a while and then move on to other employment elsewhere. I’ve had co-workers who would go so far as to (upon request) enter an elderly poerson’s home at 5:30 in the morning, and place the paper on the kitchen table while the customer slept! I’ve got a million stories, but I guess this isn’t the place. Other carriers would refuse to do anything beyond throw from the street.
I can’t recommend complaining to the newspaper, because that can cause the carrier signifigant financial punishment, but if you have a legitimate complaint, most carriers want to hear it so that they can do right by you, and make you happy. That’s their job.
One more thing - a carrier’s biggest expense each month (beyond the cost of papers) is vehicle upkeep. Every time he has to stop, turn around, shift gears or back up it costs money by wearing out the car. That’s the main reason a carrier looks for appreciation from the customer when he makes a special effort. It costs us money to make a special request. (Obviously we’re not looking for you to pay for our brake pads if you request we stop and put your paper on your porch, but we’re looking for some sign that you appreciate the effort.
A small town newspaper editor chiming in. As has been said, the paperboy (or girl) on a bicycle throwing papers onto the townspeople’s porches still exists.
While it isn’t done at my newspaper (we have a little old lady that bought a used post office jeep-with right hand drive-and she tosses our paper. She’s got a wicked arm too), most of the surrounding communities have delivery young people who generally ride bicycles.
I was talking to one nearyby editor who has one of his delivery people who rides a motorized skateboard.
A couple of different aspects come into play on whom a newspaper chooses to deliver their papers. On one hand, a small paper that uses kids to deliver the paper creates a bond between the community and the paper (it really does). However, on the other hand, kids are generally not as dependable as the older carrier.
There is also the organizational situation. If you can hire one or two adults to do the job rather than nine or ten kids, it is a great deal easier to keep track of what is going on.
When we hired our senior-citizen delivery lady, we felt we had found a way to handle a number of different aspects of the situation. She is incredibly dependable, her jeep covers more territory than a youth’s bicycle, and finally, the whole town sees her as “their” grandmother.