Issue:

“I’m used to the rain and storms, but still I’m sleepy in the early morns”

– Shimbun Shonen 1965

ONCE, LONG AGO, IN a suburb not far away, an army of youth with entrepreneurial and social skills, as well as a commitment to service and the literal value of news, delivered the world’s greatest print and photographic journalists to the far corners of driveways, or if tips were lean and weather inclement to mailboxes.

This calling, whose followers included at least three U.S. presidents, a Nobel Prize winner, John Wayne, Wayne Gretzky, and millions of preteens (including your humble scribe), was purportedly first heard by a 12 year old Ben Franklin, who hand delivered copies of the Boston Gazette.

Young Ben and we chosen many toiled under a moniker that hid the truly transformative nature of the vocation, dubbed “Paperboy,” but ultimately a laser photo of genders, ages and nationalities.

Fast forward 240 years: a U.S. stamp in 1952 commemorated the “Free Enterprise” of carriers whose bags and baskets daily bore the news, turning the cherubic kid on street corners shoutin’ “Extra, extra” into a movie cliché, as youth empowerment found literal road traction.

By 1992 the New York Times reported that at least 550,000 people were engaged in the delivery profession across the U.S., but noted a decade long move to adult carriers, as the job evolved into a late career income option.

And then, depression set in, as newspaper nations began going digital. Now, even more print media face existential questions about utility, and the once ubiquitous job of delivery is rapidly facing Smithsonian status, a video of a newspaper bag toting youth bicyclist being used in a parental abuse case would be no surprise.

That would be the story in most developed nations except Japan, where long ago Chokan Taro’s wheels of progress moved to a motorbike, and the printed word remains nearly as mighty as the sound byte.

The Japan Newspaper Publishers & Editors Association estimates that of an approximate 47 million combined daily newspaper circulation in 2013, over 95 percent were home delivered. The rate of subscriber households stands at a stupefying 0.86, as a graying population continues to expect their daily amid rain, storms or barking poodle, by morning coffee.

That means employment in Japan for over 356,000 “delivery agents” (the name sounds more elite), over 40 percent of who are women, and 7,500 of whom are students. This also implies that the motorbike gearshifts I have heard at 4:30 a.m. for years are not soon likely to go the way of my former afternoon employer, The Richmond News Leader, which made its last rounds on May 30, 1992.

And while it is indeed “good news” to learn the fraternity and sorority still exist and grow, it is with undeniable nostalgia that “paperboy” now is more a standard of professional deportment of an independent, prompt, engaged and media oriented workforce, who alas may be heading into middle age, but by damn still get the promised delivery there on time, come snow, sleet or technological obsolescence.

Dan Sloan is a former president of the FCCJ, Editor in Chief of the Nissan Global Media Center, and still owed money by Mrs. Kielpinski on Windsor View Drive.