Stop Stealing My Paper

As a 26-year-old working in the IT business, I"m the only person in my group of friends who subscribes to a print newspaper. My comrades react with amusement when they ask how I"m spending my Sundays. â??Reading the paper? they howl. â??You"re so weird. I"m proud of my subscription. I"ve been addicted to newsprint ever since I started clipping articles for current events assignments in 3rd grade. Hearing about the impending â??death of print makes me feel like I"m part of a rescue mission sent to save a civilization. Yet all of my satisfaction falls to pieces when I check my doorstep in the morning to find my paper has been stolen. Living on East 83rd Street, I worry about my newspaper"s safety more than my own. Without a doorman to protect my deliveries, I look for my news on the concrete stoop outside my walkup, only half expecting it to be there. The unscientific statistics I"ve devised show that, on average, only one of two weekend papers makes it safely inside my apartment's a number I find ironic, since print is supposedly no longer in high demand. In 2009, dailies and Sunday papers in the United States saw circulation declines of 10.6 percent and 7 percent, respectively, during the April to September period. It was the steepest year-over-year drop ever recorded by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. I can"t imagine how one even goes about stealing a paper, picking it up off the street like it"s a free party favor from the gods of New York. It isn"t. While I want people to read newsprint, I"d rather they not choose mine. I"ve factored a subscription perfectly into my budget, even downgrading my BlackBerry to a basic cell phone. But the $30 I save each month on a data plan is only worth it if I get to read the inky pages I"ve purchased in its place. Because of my news thieves, weekends bring anxiety. Rather than savor Saturday mornings, I leap out of bed and into the shoes I strategically placed by the door the evening prior. I take the stairs two at a time up from my basement studio and sprint toward the front of the building. Often, I"m too late. I trudge down the steps and crawl back into bed, uninformed and defeated. â??This wouldn"t happen if you just read your news online like everyone else, my 21-year-old brother argues, just before uttering this next dreaded phrase: â??Or if you bought a Kindle. Others in our respective age groups might agree. But I"m too attached to the mess of papers piled in the corner of my room and the ink stains on my tote bags and kitchen table. I might be the last holdout, but I won"t stand by while an industry I love gets stolen away. Instead, on those days when my paper is already being read by someone else, I"ll go out to buy another, if only to make a statement that we's the print industry and I's are not giving up on each other.