Who doesn't remember being a young lad making chump change biking around your neighborhood flinging the local paper onto doorsteps at five in the morning? Being a newsie was as much a rite of passage for America's suburban youth as it was to make some money. But kids these days, yeesh! Just no work ethic. Well, the work ethic is there, the love of newspapers too but the respect for John Q. Law isn't. Turns out in Colorado, thieves are stealing those newspaper machines at an alarming (and industrious) rate. From Folio: "Thefts of newspaper machines in a pair of Colorado counties-Greeley and Weld-have reached high levels, with the 47th Tribune newspaper dispenser stolen this week." More sordid details of the world gone wrong after the jump.

The thieves are apparently taking the machines off of street corners, then taking them to remote areas where they use a power grinder and bolt cutters to get into the machine and take the change. They usually then dump the machine alongside a road. Most of the thefts have occurred between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m.

Are they even reading the Tribune? Is it even a profitable enterprise, what with the labor and gas being at what it is today? Even the Tribune's own managers think not:

"It doesn't seem like it would be worth the effort," said Gary Doering, single copy manager for the newspaper. "They have to cut through everything to get the coin box, and it might have only a few quarters in it."

In fact, that might be a good sign to put on the side of all newspaper dispensers: Attn thieves. Nothing of value here. Move it along. xoxo the Mgmt.