A paperboy is someoneoften an older

child A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger ...

or adolescentwho distributes printed newspapers to homes or offices on a regular route, usually by

bicycle A bicycle, also called a pedal cycle, bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered assisted, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A is called a cyclist, or bicyclist. Bic ...

or automobile. In Western nations during the heyday of print newspapers during the early 20th century, this was often a young person's first job, perhaps undertaken before or after school. This contrasts with the newsboy or

newspaper hawker A newspaper hawker, newsboy or newsie is a street vendor of newspapers without a fixed newsstand. Related jobs included paperboy, delivering newspapers to subscribers, and news butcher, selling papers on trains. Adults who sold newspapers from f ...

, now extremely rare in Western nations, who would sell newspapers to passersby on the street, often with very vocal promotion. They were common when multiple daily papers in every cityas many as 50 in New York City alonecompeted.

History

The paperboy occupies a prominent place in the popular memory of many countries, including the United Kingdom, United States, Canada,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, New Zealand, Ireland, and

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. This is because it has long been the first paying job available to young boys. Newspaper industry lore suggests that the first paperboy, hired in 1833, was 10-year-old Barney Flaherty who was hired after seeing an advertisement in the Sun News and signing up for the job. The duties of a paperboy varied by distributor, but usually included counting and separating papers, rolling papers and inserting them in

newspaper bag A newspaper bag or newspaper sleeve is a lightweight bag or sleeve used to wrap newspapers to protect them from the elements. These bags are primarily made of polyethylene, although some distributors have moved to using biodegradable bags. The ...

s during inclement weather, and collecting payments from customers. The number of paperboys experienced a major decline. This is due partly to the disappearance of afternoon newspapers, whose delivery times worked better for school-aged children than did those of morning papers, which were typically delivered before 6 a.m. The numbers have also been affected by changing demographics, the availability of news and newspapers on the Internet; employment laws (particularly the mid-20th century ban of

child labour Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such e ...

), and growing concerns for the safety of un-escorted children, all of which have led many newspapers to switch to delivery by adults. Today, they are mainly used by weekly community newspapers and free shopper papers, which still tend to be delivered in the afternoons. Alternatively, sometimes paperboys are only employed once a week to deliver the paper on Sunday. Many deliveries these days are by adults in cars, known as newspaper carriers. They have traditionally been hired by the newspapers as independent contractors. Rikkancs

References

External links

* Preus Museum
Lewis Hine, Newspaperboys
photos * Vincent DiGirolamo
Crying the News: A History of America's Newsboys
(Oxford University Press, 2019). * {{Authority control Newspaper distribution Newspaper people Informal occupations Child labour Children by occupation

History

See also

References

External links