National Newspaper Carrier Day is a day to recognize those dedicated individuals who wake up early every day to delivered newspapers.

Newspapers, the printed kind that we often see in movies and old TV shows, used to be the mainstay of news and information, but over the years things have changed. Fewer and fewer newspapers are printed and many of those are for smaller towns and cities. Locally, we have The Daily Republic and The Vacaville Reporter, and those are often delivered by adults in cars or trucks, but it wasn’t always that way.

Fifty years ago, it was often young boys on bicycles who made sure that the newspaper was tossed upon the doorstep of every household. In the heat and in the cold, they delivered.

Over 180 years ago, an immigrant named Benjamin Day who lived in New York had started one of the first American newspapers, called “The Sun.” It sold for only a penny. Day’s Sun was a bargain, since newspapers in New York generally cost about six cents at the time. The Sun was a success because of its low price and he made up the difference in volume.

Rising costs have been strangling the industry over the last couple of decades, and with competition from radio, TV and the Internet, many people feel that the newspaper carrier is a dying breed. Whether or not that is true, National Newspaper Carrier Day is a day to commemorate the work that they do, now and in the future, however long that might last.