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²ÝÝ®´«Ã½paper staff pick up paper routes in delivery service absence

WASHINGTON– In an age of tablets and smartphones, internet news and instant gratification, there are still some people who want to hear the 4 a.m. thud of physical newspapers hitting their front steps.

In Massachusetts, frustrations over undelivered papers have been mounting for days. After switching to a new delivery service earlier this week, copies of the Boston Globe on all the front steps they’re supposed to be. The paper’s call center phones have been ringing off the hook. A “” posted Saturday on the publication’s website lists over 110 different zip codes where paper delivery will be delayed or disrupted.

Enter “more than 100” Globe employees, according to a statement from the paper, be they editors, reporters, or other employees, all of whom have volunteered their (early) Sunday morning to help deliver copies of the Sunday Globe.

One Globe columnist tweeted Saturday afternoon, “Yes it has come to this. #BostonGlobe journalists r getting up at 4 am to do what a company evidently can’t: deliver the paper.”

Globe staffers have also been filling in as call center volunteers in the past few days, reports. The paper delivery volunteers convened before midnight on Saturday to organize routes and package up papers.

Globe reporters are documenting their volunteer work on Twitter. Grateful subscribers are reaching out, offering coffee, cookies and other treats to staffers that come to their doors. Some former Globe deliverymen and women have offered tips and tricks for some of the routes.

Boston Business Journal editor Craig Douglas behind the delivery issue and came up with some big numbers. The  Boston Globeonly 5 percent of subscribers  were experiencing delivery issues. Still, according to Douglas’s calculations, that’s between 5,000 and 10,000 subscribers not receiving their papers. The Globe story put daily paper deliveries at 115,000 during the weekday, and 205,000 on Sundays. That’s no small feat for a group of 100 or so first-time delivery-people. However, if the flurry of photos and tweets from the crew are anything to go by, they seem to be more than happy to do the job.

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