ACHTUNG: This is not a fair and balanced story. It is an editorial by the editor.

“Workin’ for the man every night and day.” — Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1969, “Proud Mary.”

When I looked out my picture window Saturday evening my heart sank as I watched the guy who faithfully brings us the Penasee Globe to our mailbox every week. I’m sure he knew this would be one of the last times he’d be toiling at this job.

I am ashamed to admit I don’t know his name, even though I’ve seen it a few times. I have waved to him and exchanged pleasantries while encountering him during my many walks in the neighborhood with Bella the Wonderdog.

At the same time I’ve heard and seen many complaints from customers who didn’t get their paper this week, this guy has been faithful and consistent in delivering  a weekly newspaper that until the end of this month has been published weekly since 1884.

I suppose he is considered unimportant as an employee of the largest publishing firm in Michigan, which only last week announced it will cease printing and distributing a paper that has become only a shell of its former self. Once a quaint piece of Americana that helped connect the communities of Moline, Dorr, Martin, Wayland and Hopkins, of late it had become just a wrapper around inserts for grocery ads and other local stores. The news seemed to just fill in the cracks between the ads.

It’s alarming that the state’s largest newspaper publisher cannot continue to make a go of it here. I blame its lack of commitment over the last 15 years and its gradual pullback of reporters and advertising personnel, which made the product a lot less attractive than what it once was.

To be sure, Business 101 tells us the advertising, not newspaper sales, are the biggest and most important sources of revenue to keep the Globe afloat. The paper was made available free of charge with that in mind.

But in these modern times, the greatest expenses for the Globe were in printing and distribution, and apparently they overtook the income of advertising and inserts.

The sadness I experienced had a lot to with watching a man who did his job faithfully and consistently week in and week out, delivering the product on for every Saturday. All for a pittance in wages.

Yet in the end it didn’t matter. As of next month, he’s out of a job. And the Globe’s demise was not his fault. The whole sordid affair was out of his hands, the decision made by corporate bean counters who don’t live here and who obviously didn’t feel a need to keep community history alive.

“It’s nothing personal. It’s just business.”

Yet this hard-working man with no name now must find another job. I suspect he already has another, but he’s just trying to make ends meet. Though he worked hard and did his job well, he was expendable in a corporate world that didn’t care about him.

Even worse, inside one of the last Penasee editions there still was a “help wanted” ad for newspaper carriers. In the words of Rush Limbaugh, I’m not making this up.