My first experience with a daily newspaper came in 1958 when the father of a childhood friend of mine asked me if I wanted to help him deliver papers while his oldest son took the summer off. 

  ”Sure, I’d love to,” I told Mr. Fulgham, Eddie’s father, not really sure what I was getting into. 

  My family and I lived in the West Brow community on Lookout Mountain, about 10 miles from the famous Rock City tourist attraction. Mr. Fulgham’s route covered the Lookout Mountain communities on both the Tennessee and Georgia side of the mountain, as well as most of the rest of the far-flung areas atop that strategic Civil War battlefield area.

About the only advice that Mr. Fulgham gave me when I took a trial ride on my first day was, “Don’t try to read the newspaper in the car while you are rolling them up for us to throw them, OK?”

I said, OK, I won’t read it, but I wondered why?

“Because if you read the paper while we are driving around those mountain roads, you’ll get sicker’n a dog.”

I started reading the front page of the newspaper within a few minutes of the start of the route and I did, indeed, get sicker’n a dog. Mr. Fulgham just laughed when I said I had to get out of the car and throw up. I never again read the newspapers while we were delivering them the rest of the summer.

Little did I know, however, that that brief association with “journalism,” would later lead to a lifetime occupation, and avocation, for me. And as most of you know, that occupation came to a screeching halt on Nov. 6 when I was relieved of my position as editor of My Clay Sun, a community product of The Florida Times-Union, in an economic move.

The financial crisis that most newspapers are facing today could be the forerunner of the eventual demise of all daily newspapers; at least in the print form. The Detroit Free Press may have sounded that death nell this week when it announced it would only deliver papers to subscribers on Thursday, Friday and Sunday. They would still sell an abbreviated version of the paper on newsstands and racks the other four days of the week.

Newspapers are, if nothing else, purveyors of information. No matter what form of delivery that management chooses to select, newspapers will always be able to disseminate information, either via print, the web, email, cell phones, whatever. 

Print just happens to be the delivery mechanism with which I grew up and to which I am most accustomed. But then I am part of a rapidly diminishing breed — an older generation who is accustomed to reading a daily newspaper (and doing the crossword puzzle) over a couple of cups of coffee before heading to work. I am not sure you can find a person who is under 35 years old who subscribes to a newspaper. They just don’t do it. They are more accustomed to procuring their information and entertainment via the web than newspapers.

I am not saying younger people don’t read newspapers, they just don’t buy them in large numbers. My oldest son grabs the Times-Union sports sections out of the recycling bend every time he comes to visit, but he doesn’t buy a paper. If dad has one, he’ll read it. If not, he won’t. Simple as that.

My 14-year-old grandson bought a Times-Union one day recently that had several color photos of Tim Tebow on it. I don’t think he read the paper, just cut out the sports pages and taped them to his bedroom wall. Not sure that says anything about the future of newspapers, but I don’t think it does.

The point of all of this? Merely that we are witnessing a changing of habits among consumers of news. It used to be assumed by newspaper circulation managers that when people married, bought houses and had children that they would begin subscribing to a newspaper to find out about things that affect them — taxes, crime rates and local government. That is no longer true because much of that information is being offered by other sources. County commission and school board meetings are being broadcast on television and their feeds are being made available to computer users.

As we approach Christmas 2008, many of our assumptions are changing. That housing and gas prices would continue to rise, that the stock market would continue to sail on into the stratosphere and that newspapers will always be a part of our lives. I think you can see where  those things are heading. I wonder what will be next to bite the dust? Cell phones? We could only wish.

Merry Christmas to all. May God grant his blessings to all of us.