The Paper Round of St Andrews

Every morning, around seven, snow or rain, I see a young person cycle past my street with rolled-up newspapers poking out of her satchel. As someone who gets their news almost exclusively online, the paper round, the early-morning home delivery of newspapers and magazines, feels like something from another decade.

Despite the decline in demand for print newspapers, the demand for newspaper deliveries remains strong in St Andrews, continuing to be a vital part of the community. 

Pauline Johnson is the owner of Sugar Rush Newsagents, a business located by East Sands. She explained that the shop’s paper round began in 2018. “We took over the business in 2018. There used to be a paper shop anyway, but it shut down and we opened a new one,” Johnson explained. 

Demand for deliveries emerged quickly. “We got customers coming and asking for paper rounds, so we advertised for paper boys,” Johnson said. Since then, “it’s got bigger and bigger. Mainly the older generation, that’s who gets the papers delivered,” she explained. During the pandemic, demand increased further, “when people weren’t coming out.”

Since then, “numbers have gone down a wee bit because the elderly people [who] are getting it just go on their phones or just passed away,” Johnson said. Despite this, “we still have a good-size[ed] paper round.”

Erin-Beau, a teenager and St Andrews local, worked doing paper rounds in St Andrews, first for Sugar Rush Newsagents, and then for a business based in Guardbridge. She began her round at thirteen. Erin-Beau would deliver around sixteen papers in one round. “It was every day. Every day for three years [...] I did it in S1, S2 and S3,” she said.

Erin-Beau walked me through her usual morning. “I would get up and cycle out around six in the morning near Morrison’s to pick up the papers,” she said. “Sometimes the papers wouldn’t be there, so I’d have to cycle all the way back home and wait for a few minutes and go back out again. That was quite annoying. “Once I got the papers, it was easier,” she explained.

“You’d have to go through the papers and make sure they were in the right order,” she explained. There was a checklist, “with all the streets and house numbers.” Speaking of challenges, Erin-Beau mentioned the winter cold and all the hills. “Sometimes there’d be newspapers just going through the wrong doors and then you’d have to go back,” she explained.

Erin-Beau would “be done by seven [...] and then just go straight to school after that.” She remarked that balancing both was demanding. “Since I’m at school as well. It’s kind of a rush at some points.”

Erin-Beau explained that at that age, options were limited for pocket-money. “When you’re thirteen, that’s like the only real job you can get.” She described it as “quite popular” among peers. Erin-Beau was paid around 36 pounds at the end of the week.

Sugar Rush Newsagent’s current paperboys and girls range in age. “One of the papergirls is sixteen. The weekend ones are sixteen and seventeen.” Typically,“when they start they’re usually about thirteen, fourteen, and they usually stay until they leave school,” she said. Johnson described them as “all pretty good and reliable.”

In recent years, some publications, including The Telegraph, have reported a decline in paperboys, a role often described as character-building for adolescents, and suggested that this may reflect growing laziness among young people. In St Andrews, however, that interpretation appears to be far from accurate.

“The people who get it delivered and the majority of the people that come in the shop for newspapers now [are]probably 60 plus,” said Johnson, describing the demographic of her customers. “The younger generation read[s] news online, so [doesn’t] tend to buy [newspapers].” 

“We are the only people in St Andrews that offer a newspaper delivery,” Johnson said. Since customers are older, the service carries an additional social weight.“I feel like now, a lot of people are watching news on TV, but I think it should be newspapers again because there [are] a lot of old people [who] don’t know how to work technology,” Erin-Beau said.

Johnson said, “We do Christmas cards every year. For a few years, we did selection boxes. During COVID, we bought Easter eggs and we gave every customer an Easter egg.”

“It’d just be a nice thing to write cards for everyone,” Erin-Beau said. “When you put the newspaper through the door, you’d put the card through the door as well. I’d write ‘Merry Christmas from Erin-Beau.’” In return, “you’d get a card back saying like, ‘oh thank you for all your work’ and they’d put tips in it for you,” she explained.

Paper rounds also often run through families. “My dad used to work at the same place I used to work when he was younger, before they sold the business to Sugar Rush,” Erin-Beau explained. “My dad worked with my mum’s dad at the shop. He owned the shop with my granddad.” Erin-Beau’s family friends and her cousin have also worked as paperboys and girls.

Anna, a resident of St Andrews, said she began receiving paper deliveries because of her mum, and has continued the service since her mum passed away.

Describing one of her favourite memories of the job, Erin-Beau said, “Sometimes my dad would come out with me and do it with me, and sometimes we’d take the dogs out with us.” She concludes, “That was fun.”

Although print media and home newspaper delivery can feel, as I once assumed, like relics of a past decade, in St Andrews, they remain a quiet but vital part of community life. The service provides accessibility and community for older residents, meaningful ties for adolescents and families who deliver the papers, and a shared local tradition.

Illustration by Zoe Small