11-year-old boy’s weekly newspaper brings neighborhood together

WBZ

By David Wade

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    BOSTON (WBZ) — Waterman Road in Roslindale has 25 homes. It has two cemeteries. It also has one little boy with a story or two to tell.
Eleven-year-old Joseph Zyber is a young newspaper publisher with a staff of two. “It’s really just me and my mom,” Joseph said with a smile.

Joseph spends every Monday afternoon putting together the Waterman News. It’s a single page newspaper with all the news “fit to print,” as long as it’s news about Waterman Road.

“My mom told me to do something with my brain,” Joseph said.

Joseph, like most 11-year-olds, likes playing video games. His parents, like most parents, would prefer that he does something else. After all, Oxford Press’ Word of the Year is “brain rot.” So, this past summer, his mother gave him a project.

“We told both of our sons to do something with their brain and something with their body and Joseph chose this for his project,” his mom Elizabeth Perry said.

So, you’ll now see the little boy in his green froggy hat hopping all over town.

“Thursdays are print and deliver day. Then on Friday, I play with my friends,” Joseph said as he walked briskly toward the Roslindale Library where Joseph makes 30 copies of his latest edition. The library card gives him $20 worth of free printing per month. He prints in black and white to save money.

“I’ve been doing this for like a couple months now,” Joseph said. “I’m really proud of myself.”

Thanks to his mom’s challenge, Joseph is using his brain and using his legs. He walks house to house on Waterman Road stuffing his weekly paper into mailboxes.

It’s a one-page paper with recent articles about Porchfest, local grocery prices, a local road project and a replica of the future International Space Station recently on display at a nearby museum. The paper has puzzles and a word search too.

“There was a garden tour that I did, that was kind of big,” Joseph said.

Joseph has an elderly neighbor named Phillip Anastasia who looks forward to him hand delivering the paper every week. It brings back memories of being a paperboy a long time ago.

“At that age where could you make $3 a week or something,” Anastasia said with a hearty laugh.

Joseph doesn’t earn a dollar. He gets paid in self-confidence. Those walks alone to the library teach him independence. And going door to door, is teaching him the value of knowing his neighbors.

“My social skills have improved definitely,” Joseph said.

His neighbors, like Mo Pepin are getting more than headlines. “It has truly brought the neighborhood together,” said Pepin, pointing out that Porchfest had more participants this year than ever before.

Because of little Joseph Zyber, every mailbox on this road is stuffed with something…. extra. Extra. Read all about it. In the Waterman News.

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