Our last daily newspaper

I’m in mourning today. No, it’s not our cat. Even with a  recent disappointing medical diagnosis, El Gato Frankie is still wandering with us. And as far as I know, the rest of the family is also doing well. There is the current unsettling political situation in the nation and the world, but my immediate issue is only a tangent of that.

Friday, May 16, 2025, was the first day in my adult life that I didn’t receive a newspaper in the box at the end of my driveway. That’s nearly 50 years. Actually, it should have been two newspapers, The Minnesota StarTribune and The New York Times.

I got a voicemail message two days earlier informing me that my account would be closed as of Friday and that my options for continuing my subscription were digital only. I’ve been a customer at this address for over 30 years and that morning I got the boot. I was not happy.

The next morning my first call was to Customer Service where I talked to a pleasant and patient person (likely at an offshore call center) who explained to me several times that I had only one option at this point (like the voicemail message said!). I asked to speak to “someone in management” and was told that no one was available, but if I wanted the person’s email address, he’d be happy to provide it. I said “OK”.

I penned a stern, but polite email indicating my surprise and my hope that some compromise could be negotiated, and hit “send”. Less than 60 seconds later, my phone rang. It was the newspaper distribution manager for a large portion of southeastern Minnesota. He proceeded to explain the financial pressure in his world which ultimately boiled down to this: “I make $.25 on each Minnesota StarTribune that I deliver and even less on The New York Times.” On top of that, he’s only obligated to deliver to addresses a mile outside city limits. We live three miles out and there are only four customers on our road. He asked me if I knew how much tires cost these days. I was up against a stone wall. Clearly any future ink on paper deliveries to our home would need to be made by me.

To some this might not seem like the end of the world, but my relationship with newspapers is long and personal. My first paying job was as a newspaper boy. I delivered The Minneapolis Star to about 35 homes when I was in 5th grade. Usually I rode my bike or walked, but on snowy Sundays or rainy days my dad would sometimes drive the route with me.

After we moved to southern California in 1965, I got a paper route with The Register, an afternoon daily published in Santa Ana. I still used a bicycle, but now I had somewhere between 80-100 customers. I did that for about a year when I was in 8th grade. I got to do a little bragging to my classmates that year because two of my customers, Jim Fregosi and Ed Kirkpatrick, played for the California Angels baseball team. The pros didn’t make millions back then. They lived in the subdivisions like the rest of us.

When I was older and back in Minnesota, we needed money for a down payment on our first house. Since I worked fulltime days, the only option that seemed right for me for a second income was a paper route! I got a job delivering The Minneapolis Tribune right in my neighborhood in northeast Minneapolis. Now I had to use my car instead of bike since the route had over 300 addresses. Those were long days.

It’s difficult to imagine beginning each day without the newspaper on the table before and during breakfast. The physical newspaper, not the digital version. I’ve been reading the news digitally for years, of course, in addition to folding and unfolding the paper edition to just the right size to fit the table and savoring the inky aroma of the wafer thin paper. But you can’t really browse the e-version like you can the REAL version. I have the same dilemma shopping online compared to shopping in a brick and mortar store. One allows for serendipity and a more relaxed pace and the other does not. I read so many items in the paper newspaper that I would never have even found in the e-version.

But alas, I must adapt to environmental change again. I hope for a time I will still be able to occasionally purchase a daily paper when I’m in town, but these days I’m not sure how long that will last.