News
Famous Newsies of Yore
Legend has it that the first newspaper boy was 10-year-old Barney Flaherty, hired in 1833 by the New York Sun in response to an advertisement that read: “To the Unemployed a number of steady men can find employment by vending this paper.” A boy on his bicycle delivering the Toronto Star in 1940. Photo by Marjorie Georgina Ruddy via Wikimedia Commons
Ambitious, enterprising youngsters were soon selling and delivering newspapers throughout the country. The first job for many a successful person, the list of famous folks who got their start as newspaper delivery boys includes:
Walt Disney
H. Ross Perot
Bob Hope
Ed Sullivan
Danny Thomas
John Wayne
Bing Crosby
Jimmy Durante
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Herbert Hoover
Martin Luther King Jr.
Harry S. Truman
Ed Sullivan
Isaac Asimov
Carl Sandburg
Tom Brokaw
Wayne Gretzky
Jackie Robinson
Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
Source: Newspaper Association of America via Library Spot
Want to know more about what it was like to be a newspaper delivery boy? Coming up later this week, we’ve got an interview with a former newsie who worked right here in San Francisco.