Why didn’t you receive your paper today?

That’s a good question. I wish we could say that an eager reader snatched your copy of The Mirror first. Just remember that we want you to receive the paper even more than you do.

Economics and transient labor pose the biggest challenges to managing circulation for a small newspaper like The Mirror. Home delivery is a wobbly leg as well as a dying practice among the nation’s newspapers. Major daily papers in Detroit, for example, have slashed home delivery during the weekdays. Today’s newspaper carriers earn a few cents per paper, and in this business, any extra pennies add up to thousands of dollars on the bottom line.

In fact, major newspapers are killing their paperboys, and their outdated business model is to blame.

The role of “paperboy” is iconic in American history, whether referring to the “Extra, extra! Read all about it” pitch on an urban street corner, or the suburban kid flinging rolled-up papers from his bike. The traditional paperboy has all but disappeared, replaced by adults who deliver hundreds of papers via their vehicles.

For a moment, compare the newspaper to a restaurant.

Whether the restaurant is a fast-food chain or a sit-down diner, each restaurant finds ways to not only attract customers, but keep them. Some customers return because of convenience. Others are impressed with a restaurant’s menu.

At the heart of a restaurant experience is the service. You usually don’t meet the chef or owner. Instead, you interact with a waitress, hostess or cashier. These people are the face and human touch of the restaurant, often taking heat from dissatisfied customers over what could have been a cook’s mistake.

Likewise, newspapers place part of their reputation into the hands of a carrier who’s biding time before abandoning a job with odd hours and meager benefits. The practice is akin to paying a small-time waitress less than minimum wage to work the midnight shift — with no opportunity to earn tips.

And to think that at one time, newspapers relied on kids to deliver their product to your porch.

My first foray into the newspaper business was a gig delivering a weekly shopper. Everyone in the neighborhood received a copy for free; few people, if any, complained if theirs went missing. I quickly graduated to a daily suburban paper about half the size of the Tacoma News Tribune in terms of paid circulation. Seven days a week, rain or shine, I boarded that rusty 10-speed bicycle with a burlap sack slung across my back. I served about 40 customers within a one-mile radius of our home. The total task took 45 minutes, which included rubber-banding or plastic-bagging the papers.

On weekends, my alarm clock was replaced by calls from cranky customers who wanted the paper before sunrise. They would wait at the screen door with arms folded, ready to scold when I arrived. Some customers were caught off-guard if the paper came earlier, including one family man who forgot to close the family-room drapes before playing hardcore porn on his big-screen TV.

For a teen not yet old enough for a minimum-wage job, the paper route always put money in my pocket for baseball cards, burgers and music. I could practically ride the route in my sleep, and neighborhood kids filled in when my family went out of town. The route was a source of spending money, not a side job to make ends meet.

In hindsight, it’s a wonder the newspaper didn’t replace young carriers after stretches of sub-par customer service. I certainly deserved to be fired at one point. Even if my customers called to complain, they rarely cancelled service, perhaps begrudgingly so. Then again, that was during a time when newspapers stood as the only game in town — the mighty gatekeepers of current events. The Internet destroyed that monopoly, busting barriers while luring newspaper customers down other avenues of information.

The number of paid subscribers directly relates to the price of advertising and thus a newspaper’s income. If you’ve ever received an offer for home delivery from the Seattle Times, for example, there is a reason the caller won’t take “no” for an answer.

If and when big newspapers discontinue paid mass home delivery, there is a silver lining. A renewed focus on delivery of information means another look at customer service. Unlike the change in medium and mode of delivery, the principles of customer service stay the same: The customer is always right.