You couldn't blame Jamie Bowen for feeling like a wagon maker after the invention of the automobile or a typewriter repairman after the arrival of the computer age.

Like an elevator operator on his last ride to the top floor or a lumberjack floating logs down a river, he wonders if his dream job will exist 20 years from now.

Bowen, a journalism student at the University of Utah, wants to become a newspaper reporter when he graduates in two years. Not an Internet news reporter, not a blogger or a podcast writer. An old-fashioned newspaper reporter, preferably at the San Francisco Chronicle, his hometown paper.

Trouble is, San Francisco might not have a newspaper by the time Bowen is ready to cover the cops beat and city council meetings. For that matter, dozens of other cities could be without newspapers, too, as advertising revenues plummet and people continue to flock to the Internet for their news. (Hopefully, dear reader, that wouldn't be you.)

It's little wonder that Bowen's friends and relatives keep asking him, "Are you nuts?"

Bowen sits down for a lasagna-and-salad special at Tony Caputo's Deli at the U of U, where he wanted to meet for a Free Lunch chat between classes.

"I guess you could say that my timing is a bit off," he says, "but I'm hoping to beat the odds. Newspapers are just so much better than the Internet. They're more fun to read and you can take them with you. Besides, where else are you going to find a watchdog to tell the truth about what's going on in the world?"

Whenever he reads that another newspaper is closing or shrinking its staff, "it hurts," says Bowen. "The job market is getting smaller and smaller at the same time I've discovered what I want to do in life. But I'm not giving up."

Bowen developed his tenacity at a young age, when he signed up to deliver newspapers a few years after his family moved to Utah from San Francisco. It wasn't easy for an 11-year-old to roll out of bed before dawn, but he knew that people were depending on him to get those papers to their front porches.

After graduating from Alta High School, he flirted with becoming an archeologist, but then Bowen discovered a new kind of digging.

"I took a news reporting class and found out that I loved research and I loved to write," he says. "I've always loved puzzles and figuring out how things work. The newspaper business seemed like a perfect fit."

Most of Bowen's journalism classmates plan to pursue careers in broadcasting, public relations or Internet reporting. They're surprised that he plans to enter the newspaper job market at the worst time in history, when papers seem to be disappearing like hot lead type.