My Life in the News Industry

By Andy Beaudoin on February 25, 2013

I’m 22 and I’ve worked in journalism for about a decade. Let me back up, I was somewhere around 11 years old when I started delivering newspapers in my neighborhood in Midland, Michigan. I started the job for free as the young apprentice of my older brother, who had been the apprentice of our older sister. I guess you could say it was a family business.

Sure, words like “terrible” come to mind when I think about waking up at 6 a.m. on Chrismas morning to bring people the news, but I can honestly say that my life in the news industry has held more perks than pitfalls.

To start, delivering newspapers was never a dream job for the Beaudoin children. No, it was the endeavor of our father, who has always been more than willing to donate himself and his children to any labor-intensive projects hosted by neighbors or feeble church ladies. Somewhere around the time of my sister being in middle school, the opening of a newspaper delivery position had been floating around the neighborhood. My dad, a delivery boy in his youth, did not hesitate to volunteer his first-born as our neighborhood’s newest deliverer.

My sister’s first day on the job would mark the next 16 years of daily bike rides around the neighborhood, bearing the good name of the Midland Daily News in an ink-stained sack of newspapers. In the winter, you would come home shivering and in the summer, you would return soaked in sweat and your hands dirtied with ink residue from touching 32 front pages.

People often assume that delivering newspapers is a “fun” job of carelessly tossing tightly-rolled journals here and there and wherever you please (as romanticized by the 1984 arcade game, “Paper Boy”). They couldn’t be more wrong. Each house on the route was accompanied by specialized directions and locations (we made Excel spreadsheets) for proper newspaper placement: between the doors in the back, face-up on the welcome mat just inside of the garage, weekdays in the mailbox, weekends on the front porch, folded, unfolded, rubber-banned or bagged, etc. Some seasoned customers even built their own custom mailboxes. Did I encounter frightening dogs and awkward moments with my neighbors? You bet I did.

But of course, I had help. Newspapers were expected to be delivered before 8 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays; while I am more than certain that this was a rule made up by my family, I would undoubtedly feel guilty if Mrs. Fischer received an 8:05 a.m. newspaper. Either way, it was always my dad who woke up first on the weekends. He would cram newspapers into the delivery bags with an unbelievable amount of energy, while waiting for his lethargic son to get out of bed and pick up the slack. Never will I see a man so willing to work for ten cents a newspaper than my own father. He still tells me he liked it.

Sunday and holiday morning newspapers included five-pound ad inserts shoved between the entertainment and sports sections—my dad, I must confess, usually did all that stuffing. Sometimes, we even ditched the bikes for the car. My mom was a huge help as well, always greeting us after a long Sunday morning’s delivery with fresh pancakes and eggs.

There were other perks, for sure. Winter time meant two things: frigid weather and generous neighbors. I could have paid rent with the Christmas tips I made. Having a steady bank account at 12-years-old was also nice when I wanted that new video game.

I never thought my life in journalism would go beyond delivering newspapers and running away from the Galloway’s dogs, but sure enough I would work my way up to one of the top editors for my high school newspaper. I even found myself freelancing for my hometown newspaper, which I used to deliver and now I’m a contributor for Uloop News. It’s safe to say I’ve worked on and off in the news industry for well over a decade and as weird as that may be, I should know by now that giving people the news is clearly a family business.

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