Do you still get newspapers thrown onto your front porch?
Posted by Relevant_Mortgage349@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 80 comments
I recently visited a small town in PA and noticed newspapers on a front porch. I thought this has faded away long ago. Do you still get newspapers at home?
I live in a suburb in Florida and I haven’t seen this for at least 8 years I think.
catslady123@reddit
Sometimes, not necessarily a whole newspaper but a circular for the grocery store or another service.
psychocentric@reddit
I think we phased it out about 5 years ago. Now it comes from the mail service. Our newspaper was really struggling to pay someone to do it, and then relief drivers on top of it. They do seem to be pushing digital subscriptions a lot, so I wonder if the mailed ones will be discontinued as well.
Tristinmathemusician@reddit
We did for a while (up until 2015 or so) but we eventually decided to not renew the subscription.
It would just be some dude driving by in a car throwing them out his window at like 5 am. It would land somewhere on your property lol.
Anti_Meta_Abuser@reddit
It just depends on the neighborhood
pumainpurple@reddit
The only newspapers here are the ones in the stands by the door. They are local events and ads no news per se. The local paper is now digital.
theflyinghillbilly2@reddit
Our local paper actually gave us an Ipad with an online subscription, just so they wouldn’t have to deliver it anymore!
TravelerMSY@reddit
It’s still done in high density areas where your front door is right next to the sidewalk. For everywhere else, they’re typically delivered via cars.
And this is also sort of an old person thing. Everyone I know reads it online or on an iPad.
QuietObserver75@reddit
My parents did before they sold their house a month ago.
Wielder-of-Sythes@reddit
Mine always got throw on the driveway. My driveway is 300ft long though so that’s probably got a lot to do with it.
magicpasta@reddit
Yes. And if it's not on the porch, my grandpa gets pissed and has me call the to have a strike put against the carrier. He specifically says "my front door is On this street not that street
FutureEar6482@reddit
My 75 year old parents still get it delivered to their mailbox that is next to the front door. We stopped getting it about 15 years ago but it was thrown in the driveway for us.
AnimatedHokie@reddit
No.
OlderNerd@reddit
I do, but many people don't. I'm in my 50's
Jakebob70@reddit
I don't know anyone who still gets a print newspaper. I haven't gotten one since the early 90's.
BookLuvr7@reddit
Nope. I get it electronically and have for over a decade. Thankfully a lot of the best credible news outlets have good websites.
ageekyninja@reddit
Newspapers are in a sad state tbh. They kind of just rot in people’s driveways and eventually get thrown out. Nobody reads physical papers anymore. People get their news online. Thing is, with how paywalls and ads are going, I suspect we will come full circle and work our way back to paper eventually.
devnullopinions@reddit
In my neighborhood it’s mostly the older retired folks that still get a physical newspaper.
Redbubble89@reddit
Some neighbors still got the Sunday but I don't know about recently
JessicaGriffin@reddit
My husband owns an independent newspaper distributorship, and we deliver the paper. Our customers are mostly very elderly, and we are down to only a few customers left, but we are clinging on.
Energy4Days@reddit
Hope you have an exit strategy
JessicaGriffin@reddit
Yeah. It’s my second job, and husband is almost ready to retire after 30 years in the business. In 1995, we had 3000 customers and seven employees. Now we have 350 customers, and it’s just the two of us.
rawbface@reddit
No, but in my neighborhood there are some people that still do.
My township puts out a weekly newspaper for free but that goes into the mailbox.
machagogo@reddit
I'm 50. I delivered the newspaper from 11-16 years old and I had to make sure it was on the stoop of the house. You could not place them in the mailboxes because A theybwere usually too large, B they were not mail, so that would not be legal.
My parents got the newspaper when i was a kid, but I myself have never had a newspaper delivered to me.
VelocityGrrl39@reddit
There’s an apartment building next to me with mostly younger people and I do see the NYT out front when I walk my dog.
Personally I’m in my 40s, and though I do have a digital subscription to NYT, I would love to have a paper subscription if it was practical. There’s something different about flipping the pages, reading through all the headlines to see what happening and reading the stories you want to read, vs using an app to access the same info. But I think that’s related to my age, not really the actual accessibility of the information.
Random fact: I was allergic to newspaper ink as a kid. So as I was reading them, I’d be sneezing repeatedly. Either I grew out of it or they’ve changed the process.
TheCloudForest@reddit
As of two years ago, the last time I visited my hometown, yes, my parents got the daily paper delivered. But they are approaching 80, and the paper is a shadow of its mid-nineties self. It went frome nearly 100 pages daily to more like 8.
GOTaSMALL1@reddit
Can confirm: My parents are in their late 80s and also get the paper delivered.
DJErikD@reddit
Can confirm: mom is 87 and still pays a small fortune annually to get the daily newspaper delivered.
MaterialInevitable83@reddit
We get one daily and very much DID NOT CONSENT TO THIS NUISANCE
VelocityGrrl39@reddit
My parents canceled their subscription and the company just kept…sending them.
OhThrowed@reddit
I think my local paper is down to just a weekly print run, but yes, they'll deliver it if you subscribe.
Relevant_Mortgage349@reddit (OP)
Congratulations on having a big house!
OhThrowed@reddit
Ha! No, they'll toss it in front of my door... which is porch-less.
Relevant_Mortgage349@reddit (OP)
Nice. It makes sense.
Also I don’t understand the downvotes in my comment lol
TheCloudForest@reddit
Because your joke didn't make any sense?
MattFlynnIsGOAT@reddit
I'm guessing people were wondering how you possibly inferred they have a big house based on their comment?
WittiestScreenName@reddit
No
BankManager69420@reddit
Yep. My newspaper gets brought up and set right in front of my door. I also live in an apartment complex though so that might change things?
annaoze94@reddit
Growing up we always had it thrown into the driveway but no even my parents who are almost 70 have completely converted to news being on their phones or on their TVs so no which is good because we would always have to use them as dog poop bags and the way they skidded across the concrete always created holes You got stuck with
CardiologistSweet343@reddit
No. I don’t think I’ve read a newspaper in 25 years.
They still exist, but usually only the very elderly get them delivered. And it’s expensive.
Starbucksplasticcups@reddit
The Epoch Times gets thrown on my driveway, then thrown in the trash.
Current_Poster@reddit
I had a paper route, with my father, for a while (it was a whole spread-out town), and people went for either "in a special mailbox" or "in the driveway", usually. I only had a couple that wanted it on the porch.
cruelico@reddit
they’ll throw em in the driveway if you subscribe to it
Suppafly@reddit
I don't, boomers do.
Techaissance@reddit
You’d have to be Goku to throw a newspaper to my front porch from the road so no, it doesn’t happen here.
VeronicaMarsupial@reddit
I subscribed to Sunday only delivery from 2020 to 2022. The paper guy managed to hit the porch most of the time. It was nice especially during the pandemic when there weren't many places to go, to read the news and features and do the puzzles and stuff without being on a screen. Eventually I got busy enough again that I never got around to a lot of it and I felt bad about all the paper I was putting in the recycling.
CupBeEmpty@reddit
I’m fairly certain the only people I know that get true paper newspapers delivered are my parents.
They chuck them at the end of the driveway.
I will also use this as my chance to say paperboy for Nintendo was my jam as a child.
TrixieLurker@reddit
Someone comes through our condo lot every morning and tosses one in front of my neighbor's garage, they are the only people I know who has newspaper delivery.
Judgy-Introvert@reddit
Haven’t had a newspaper subscription in years.
cdb03b@reddit
When I still got the news paper delivered it was thrown at my house. It rarely made it to the porch and typically was either in the driveway or front yard. Once I found it on my roof. I no longer get the news paper physically.
Bluemonogi@reddit
When we subscribed to our local small town newspaper they were all delivered by the postal service with our regular mail in our mailbox. We did not renew our subscription this year but that is how it was for about the past 15 years here. It is not a thick newspaper.
RGG8810@reddit
The Boomers still do.
taniamorse85@reddit
We gave up on getting a newspaper delivered years ago. We live in an apartment complex, and there is one person in the complex who is supposed to deliver them. Over the course of about 2 months before we cancelled out of frustration, I think our paper (Sunday edition only) was maybe delivered 3 times.
Prometheus_303@reddit
It's not tossed onto the porch (or anywhere else for that matter). It's delivered just like the mail, except at 4am instead of 11:30am...
Whoever delivers it drives up the road, and slides a paper into the newspaper box at each house who subscribes, all without getting out of their car, and then pulls on up to the next house...
Each newspaper has its own box. Our region has two "local" papers (one from our actual city & the other from the greater "metro" area (or as Metropolitan as ~50k ish can be)... So some people will have a white and green box, some have one or the other... Most (like us) don't have any. The boxes are usually near the mailbox.
We don't subscribe to any. But my next door neighbors and the neighbors across the street from us do. Their mail & paper boxes are together...
Freaked me out one morning when I happened to look out the window and see a car parked down near the house for a few moments then just slowly pull away... Wasn't till the PM when I mentioned it to someone else "oh they're just delivering the paper!". Duh...
Next door neighbors do 2 week vacation every summer & have me collect their mail & paper. Not a big deal, I have to go down to get my own, their mailbox is only a few steps away... The only problem is I can never remember which paper box is theirs from year to year. The mail box has their address number on it & I can double check the names on the envelope to make sure I'm not grabbing across the street neighbors mail... But the paper!!! There's no address, no name... I think there's been a few times I've grabbed the wrong paper the first few days when I go to grab the mail & the box I had been grabbing from is empty but the other box still has a paper in it...
ShadeTreeMechanic512@reddit
Our printed and delivered newspaper got to be so expensive i was able to switch to an electronic-only subscription, buy an iPad, and the savings paid for the iPad in just a few months. You still flick through the pages, but on a screen. As a bonus I can zoom in to read the small print.
w84primo@reddit
I used to get the Sunday paper delivered to my driveway. I never ordered it, and never paid for it. They just randomly started showing up. I remember when the first one showed up I was backing out of my driveway and ran it over. I didn’t know what it was, and felt like shit for a second thinking it might have been a cat or an animal of some sort. Then realized it was just a paper. I threw it in my car and ended up reading it. Then I looked forward to seeing it every week. But I haven’t seen it in a while. I guess they either figured it out or whoever was supposed to be getting it stopped paying.
lawfox32@reddit
Yes, my parents get both local and national papers delivered. Some people where I am definitely get the local paper delivered. My parents are in their 60s and I'd guess the average age in my immediate neighborhood all told is probably mid 40s, median age maybe 30s.
Im_Not_Nick_Fisher@reddit
I’m not even sure what the local newspaper would even be. Like you, I’m in Florida. Brevard County, and I believe there are local news outlets. But I believe they are mostly just online. I used to get something almost weekly thrown in my driveway. It was just local advertising and nothing else. I haven’t seen anything like that in the past few years.
Maynard078@reddit
I haven't gotten a newspaper in 20 years. And I'm a news junkie!
scottwax@reddit
They raised their prices beyond their worth.
Kenderean@reddit
We don't have a subscription but there's a local paper that just gets delivered a couple of times a week. They toss it into the driveway, not onto the porch. From what I understand from my neighbors, it's almost impossible to get them to stop delivering it. I really don't understand their business model because I don't know anyone who pays for it or even opens it. It gets immediately put into the recycling.
Motormouth1995@reddit
The library I work gets its local (county) newspaper in the mail every Wednesday. My parents had a newspaper box beside the mailbox up until I was 10. I haven't seen any local paper deliveries in a few years. Hell, I'm not even sure if the daily regional paper is still available for purchase in the machine at the only gas station in the town I call home.
AuntRobin@reddit
I’m also in Florida. A 55+ community with my mother with dementia. I’ve been here almost 7 years now and when I arrived we received it seven days a week in a bag thrown halfway up our driveway.
Shortly after my father passed we realized we didn’t need daily delivery anymore because mom only likes certain articles and I was willing to read them online. Trying to cancel it was kind of like trying to cancel your cable company though, so the retention agent found out what columns mom liked and found a partial week subscription that would ensure she got those columns. I think we received Thursday through Sunday for about five years. Of course the bill kept getting higher and she was actively reading it less and less often. By the time we quit earlier this year they had stopped physically printing a Saturday paper and it started mailing the few days that we did still subscribe to. Up until that point our paper boy had been a lady driving through the neighborhood and throwing papers of the drives. eventually I was the one to make the call to cancel it was a simple as that. He didn’t really have an answer for that other than “ok, do you need a refund or should we just finish out the subscription you have?”
vinyl1earthlink@reddit
Here at the retirement village, they toss them in front of the garage doors, because the porches don't face the street.
joepierson123@reddit
We still get the local free PennySaver delivered every week, whether you want it or not
karinda86@reddit
Unfortunately yes. Even though I called and unsubscribed several times, I still get the local paper which gets thrown into the bin. Sometimes I don’t even realize it came and I drive over it or it sits on the side of my curb for a couple of weeks until I muster up the energy to dispose of the same useless “newspaper” that I have called and emailed to unsubscribe to countless times.
the_real_JFK_killer@reddit
New guy usually hits somewhere vaugly close to my yard, but yeah
KR1735@reddit
In my small-ish town (which has grown substantially in recent years), the older part of town doesn't have mailboxes on the street. Mailmen have to go up to their door and leave it in a box.
I've never lived in such a house and have never paid any attention to their newspapers, but I suspect these would be the homes that have their newspapers delivered on their front porch. Whether they're thrown or placed gently, I have no idea.
Odd-Help-4293@reddit
I could do, if I subscribed to the local paper.
typhoidmarry@reddit
I haven’t gotten a paper in around 20 years.
band-of-horses@reddit
Yes, when I got it delivered. Though I cancelled years ago when the "local" paper got bought out by a large corporation that fired almost all the local staff.
captainstormy@reddit
A couple of my neighbors still get a morning paper delivered. It gets thrown onto their driveway.
VoluptuousValeera@reddit
Where else would you get a newspaper subscription? Yes print media is dying, but it's not dead.
It will be on your porch, the mail lobby at your apartment complex, the paper box (located below peoples physical mailboxes)
TemerariousChallenge@reddit
We only have the weekend subscription now, but they toss the paper on the driveway
TheBimpo@reddit
I honestly have no idea if my local delivers or not. They only publish once a week, I just buy it at the store.
HoyAIAG@reddit
They throw in the driveway now
DrWhoisOverRated@reddit
I don't have a front porch, and don't have a newspaper subscription.
There is a local paper that will deliver for very cheap if you want it.
mmbg78@reddit
Yes it though it’s more so onto the driveway
Folksma@reddit
When i walk to work early in the morning, I see papers tossed on the sidewalk and in the street
SlamClick@reddit
If I were a subscriber to my local paper they would absolutely throw it on my walkway and drive away. I'd be super duper impressed if they could make it onto my porch.
ThatMuslimCowBoy@reddit
I don’t think so