The farewell to a paper route
As the Charlotte Observer ends morning carrier deliveries and starts 3-day-a-week distribution via U.S. mail, Leigh Robinson gets ready to retire her route after 40 years
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LEDGER IN-DEPTH
For 40 years, carrier Leigh Robinson has slung newspapers and forged friendships. It all ends next weekend, as Charlotte’s largest paper shifts toward digital.
Leigh Robinson started a paper route in Charlotte 40 years ago at age 15 and never stopped, even delivering the Greensboro News & Record when she moved to Greensboro to attend college there. Her career delivering the Charlotte Observer will end Sept. 16, when the Observer will start distributing via U.S. mail. “I’m not sure how I’m going to sleep through the night,” Robinson said.
by Cristina Bolling
The front windows are down, and humid pre-dawn air blows through Leigh Robinson’s 2004 Ford Expedition as she rumbles through the streets of Charlotte. A stack of Charlotte Observer newspapers sits on the console beside her, with two more stacks in the backseat and another on the dashboard at easy reach.
It’s a little past 2 a.m., and Robinson is about halfway through her three-hour newspaper delivery run. She knows these roads by muscle memory.
As she drives, Robinson grabs a newspaper from the stack next to her, rolls it up with the help of her right thigh and slides it into a pink plastic bag that’s hanging from a bound stack dangling from the rearview mirror.
She slows down to 10 mph and flings the paper straight across residential Maryland Avenue near Freedom Park, landing it on a stoop with a quiet thud.
For the last four decades, since she was 15 years old, Robinson has been tossing the news to front doors before dawn, starting on this very block.
That ends Sept. 16, the day the Observer will switch from morning delivery six days a week by newspaper carrier to afternoon delivery three days a week via the U.S. Postal Service.
The change, wrote Observer executive editor Rana Cash in a July article announcing the move, will allow The Observer to transition to a “digital forward newsroom that meets the expectations and demands of today’s news consumers.” She said print has “become cost-prohibitive and is limited by early deadlines.”
The shift away from print is a worldwide phenomenon, as consumers increasingly prefer around-the-clock information on computers and cell phones, as opposed to once-a-day updates on paper. But that convenience also comes at a human cost.
Robinson, 55, says she knew the day would arrive eventually.
She’s seen it coming for years now, as newspapers got lighter and harder to fling, as stacks became smaller and as her route grew longer because her customers were becoming more spread apart. Streets on her route went from nearly every house taking the newspaper, to half of them subscribing — then a handful — then one — or none.
At her peak, 18 years ago, she delivered 800 copies of the Observer a night. Tonight, that number is down to 130.