The American paperboy is extinct. It's tragic.

As a complete technophile, I love technology and am usually an early adopter of most new-fangled gizmos and gadgets. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I am usually the guy at the store the first day the new “it” item is released. I’ve always loved technology and it’s a love affair that has followed me into fatherhood and middle age.

Being a former newspaper reporter, I do still love newspapers even though they’re the 21^st Century equivalent of the abacas.  The days of holding newspaper over my morning coffee are long gone. Now, I can read the Wall Street Journal or my hometown San Diego Union-Tribune right on my iPhone – even if I am on the crapper.

One of the reasons I fell in love with newspapers was because it was my first job at 12 years old. I delivered, via my trusty BMX two-wheeler, the evening edition of the north San Diego Blade Tribune. The smell of the newsprint, mixed with the hundreds of rubber bands, flung out onto the living room floor of my boyhood home still resonates with me. It was my first job and I loved it. I think I made $30 a month.

I had a challenging route. In San Diego we have hills. Some of them darn-right huge. But I peddled and peddled determined to get my customers the latest news “hot off the press.”Being a paperboy used to be a right of passage for kids in America. I am sure at least half of those people reading this post either had a paper route or had a sibling with a paper route. It just was part of the fabric of America and the newspaper business.

It was my first lesson on personal responsibility, commitment and follow-through. I had to get home form school and get my papers ready to go and then hit the road. Then it was back home to do my homework. It was a lot for a 12 year old but it taught me so many valuable lessons.

It was also my first foray into customer service. Sometimes, I’d miss a house or I’d throw the paper somewhere wet.  I then heard from my customers and even lost part of my monthly pay with the complaints. That taught me to do the job right – the first time.

I bring this up because paperboys have gone the way of the drive-in theater. No longer do you see kids peddling through their neighborhoods feeding their neighbors the latest news just in time for supper. The afternoon paper has pretty much been dead for almost two decades, which is why you don’t see the beloved paperboy tossing the newsprint to your doorstep.

I am sure there are other reasons too. Some are probably rationale (liability in a litigious world, low circulation) and some irrational (child abduction). I wonder if the demise of the paperboy steals away a very important practical business lesson for our kids. Sure, there are other ways to teach our kids these lessons but none as rich or historical.

Even though I have many friends in the newspaper business, I am not upset about the impending death of the old media business model. It just doesn’t work anymore and most were too slow to catch on. They were fat and happy and they didn’t get the Internet from Day One. Most still don’t. They’ll soon go the way of the rotary phone but journalism will live on in a new, innovative way.

This is fact: the paperboy will never make his resurgence. Like the newspapers he worked for, the business model – no matter how much we romanticize it – is a dinosaur and it can’t survive in the instant-news world we live in.

For this former paperboy, I just wish it would’ve lasted just a little longer.

My 9 year-old son, upon seeing a paperboy in an 1980s movie, asked me:

“Dad? Do they pay people to deliver those papers on a bike,” he said.

“They used to,” I replied.

“Cool, I’d like to do that,” he snapped back.

If only he could.

Follow Scott on Twitter @prgully or email him at scott@everyotherthursday.com. His personal blog, where he writes about public relations and social media, is www.scottgulbransen.com. Just don’t bitch to him because he has a very strong pimp hand.

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