In Mobile as a 10-year old, 1950-51, I sold newspapers early in the morning--5:30 a.m.--on a street corner near the main entrance to Brookley AFB. Like a previous commenter, I didn't last long.
The newsboy in the photo is probably on Government Street, a main thoroughfare, about where the entrance to the Bankhead tunnel now is.
It's also possible, though less so, that he's a few blocks around the corner on Royal Street.
Submitted by The Expat on Mon, 04/07/2008 - 10:21pm.
I remember when the paperboy job disappeared from Long Island. It was in the mid 1980's, right when I was wanting to be a paperboy like my older brothers had been. I don't know the details of it, but some older man bought one of the Postal Service's discarded right hand drive Jeeps and took over all the local paper routes. That was the end of it for the kids. They left an envelope in your box every week for you to leave your check in and we never saw the paper deliveryperson again, unless you were up at 5 AM when he was passing by. I have no idea what it's like now, as I left the U.S. nearly a decade ago, fed up with the direction it was headed and boy am I glad I did.
Back in the 1960s, I had a paper route for a while. Even then, paper carriers were not newspaper employees. No, we were "independent contractors" who solicited sales door to door, delivered to homes 7 days a week and collected once every 2 weeks. I had a canvas bag draped over my bicycle handlebars, loaded with 50 or 60 papers. It was tedious and not very rewarding - I didn't last long.
Our town, anyway, had no newsies hawking papers on the street. I think by then radio and TV had taken over the "breaking news" category. You could buy individual papers at barber shops, drugstores and the local hotel. Our town had 4 daily papers available (Omaha, Lincoln morning & evening, and Beatrice) plus the local paper 3 days a week.
The Internet is taking a toll on those papers today.
The reason you don't see paperboys anymore has nothing to do with kids and their willingness to work, and everything to do with the newspaper delivery business and how it is run. Newspapers want no part of child workers anymore. But don't let me stop your misinformed rant...
Submitted by Anonymous Tipster on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 10:43am.
Amazing, that we are looking at a newspaper as it was on Saturday, October 10, 1914 -- papers are so forgettable, no one could have guessed, least of all the Newsie, that he'd be seen and known all these decades later. This site really is like going back in time.
I am wondering about a technical question:
how is it possible to get a detail from the original picture with such a fine resolution.
If I download the picture it has a resolution of 1200x861 and the detail from it will have a resolution of approximately 120x100 but the detail shown in the comment has a resolution of 485x400.
Can anyone tell me how that is possible?
By the way: I am a European lover of historical and cartographic sites. I am very pleased to have found Shorpy. Gives me such an interesting insight in the U.S. society in the past century. thanks for all that.
Alex
Bussum, Netherlands
[The full-resolution image here is 5000 x 3587 pixels. We downsize the full-resolution images to approximately 1200 pixels wide before posting them to the site. - Dave]
Submitted by Anonymous Tipster on Sun, 05/06/2007 - 11:01pm.
Flip the picture upside down, and you see the newspaper has a banner headline that reads, in part, "BOSTON TAxxx SECOND." On October 10, 1914, the Boston Braves beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 1-0 in the second game of the World Series, ultimately sweeping 4-0. Suffice to say, the newspaper, and the photo, are probably from the morning of Oct. 11, 1914.
That's very good. (Another clue would be the caption under the photo that says "October 1914.") It's the afternoon paper of Saturday, October 10 - Dave
