IT was a beautiful late-summer morning. The sky was that slightly sinister September blue, nobody had attacked me on the subway, my daughter Billie had eaten breakfast and even the dog was behaving.

Really, there didn’t seem to be much to upset me. I could drop Bill off at school, pick up a coffee, breakfast and the papers and start my day. Then we stopped at the newsagent.

Beneath the counter and its display of Lifesavers, Butterfingers, Dime Bars and Hershey’s chocolate was a naked shelf where the newspapers ought to be. I wanted a Times, a Post and – hell, why not push the boat out another 25c – a Daily News. There was nothing there. Nor was there going to be, ever again. My local newsagent doesn’t sell news anymore.

When I asked in a state of shock where the papers were, he told me his days of selling newspapers were over. It was “too much bother” and “not worth it”, he said. I started to feel nauseous. Admittedly, I hadn’t had my breakfast, or a coffee, but this was too much.

“But you are a newsagent,” I stammered. “Where are the newspapers?” I left in a state of confusion, then doubled back to get to the bottom of this horror.

The people who distribute newspapers in New York are always late, said our man. “And they rip me off.” He was making 2c on a Post (cover price 25c), 5c on a Daily News (25c) and 9c on a New York Times ($1.25, or about €0.9). A plastic bag costs him 3c.

Surely, papers are what attract people? I will not be going back now there are no papers. And as for the small fortune I spend on stationery and magazines each week, he can kiss goodbye to that.

Our man – or ex-man – claimed nobody else was moaning. He’s always struck me as being a bit mad, but can this be true?

Back in May, the industry reported a 2.1% drop in weekday circulation, and 3.1% on Sundays, in the six months ending March 31, compared with the same period a year earlier. The figures, compiled by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, cover 745 of the nation’s more than 1,400 daily newspapers. It’s a significant dip in a sad downward trend and matters do seem to be getting worse. A few months ago when I was in San Francisco, I read in horror that a quarter of one paper’s staff had been laid off.

America is not the UK or Ireland – there’s no “national” press to speak of except The Wall Street Journal and the much-maligned USA Today (which is really rather good and widely copied). Many of the local papers in the US deserve to be shot. But in New York, circulation at the Post and the News has actually risen and the Times, for all its flabby smugness, still often sets the nation’s news agenda. Even freebies such as The Village Voice have at least one thing worth reading. In New York, newspapers still matter. Or so I had thought.

I’m now having nightmares that news-free newsagents will spread. Can it be true that newsagents no longer need to sell news?

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