I knew I was done as a newspaperman when my editor left me a voicemail that we needed to have a phone meeting at 8:20 a.m. the next day.

I knew it was my layoff notice; why else does a boss want to talk twenty minutes past any hour if not to let you go?

I freaked out, of course, and sleep did not come easy that night. But I had been expecting that call for years. The time of newspapers — and newspaper journalists — had ended, at least for me. Given the layoffs in media recently, perhaps the time of news is waning.

It’s time for Hollywood to have an 8:20 a.m. phone call.

Everyday around this time of year, my mailbox and front patio brim with paper: Boxes, posters, screenplays, paperbacks, sheet music, stationery, pamphlets, fliers, hardbound coffee table books and confetti carved as delicately as artisanal string cheese.

All for an awards vote in an industry struggling to remain socially relevant and fiscally solvent.

This is hardly new ground for studios. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association took so much junket and awards swag that it had all the credibility of a Tom Selleck reverse-mortgage ad, and The Golden Globes’ clout spiraled into oblivion.

Now, the Critics Choice Awards, of which I’m a member, is second to Oscar in industry back-pattery. If Academy members get as much studio spam as CCA members — and I’d guess they receive two-to-three times as much — they’re drowning in dead trees as well.

There’s no kind way to say it: Studios try to buy awards. And some critics may be swayed by the ad campaign. Last year, studios sent piano sheet music to the 600 CCA members for the James Bond song and movie No Time To Die. Eilish autographed the sheets. The song won at the CCAs and the Oscars.

After the Oscar win, I went on eBay to see if any sheets were for sale. There were two: one with a Buy It Now price of $350 and one with an open auction that began at $250. I’ll admit: I probably would have sold mine too if I could work the ebays and Charlie did not have an Eat It Now policy on all paperwork left unattended.

Maybe the movie business doesn’t see many parallels with the newspaper business, but I can’t see anything else: A storied American tradition that is an exercise in craftsmanship and cost and existentially at risk in a rising technological tide.

Like newspapers, film feels bulky and slow — at least compared to its digital counterparts. Like newspapers, film faces a daunting stream, chock full of young fish willing to swim on the cheap. Like newspapers, film takes time, the most fleeting quality in a click-bait ecosystem.

Most puzzling, perhaps, is Hollywood’s egregious hypocrisy. I’ve been off the daily beat for eight years now, but I can remember a time when studios boasted how green their productions were. Some movies, studios beamed, left virtually no carbon footprint. Now, with the movies industry gasping for air, studios are clearclutting acreage for a tin trophy.

I get the swagger. When USA Today hired me away from the Post, the editor touted a “near-limitless” travel budget. But swagger fades fast; now journos are lucky to get mileage reimbursed.

Some studios and publicity firms do this right. Apple and Universal, for instance, send e-versions of their movies along with its mountainous paperwork. Bardo and Pinnochio were delights delivered digitally.

And honestly, I can’t say the ads and swag do a goddamn thing. I love the candy and wine and long-play albums (yup) you send. But I ain’t changing my vote. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once was my favorite movie this summer, and it remains my favorite movie of this year. I didn’t need the EEAAO Christmas wrapping paper to remind me.

Beware low-hanging fruit that hangs from withering vines, Hollywood. Roads filled with pulp go up awfully quick. If…hang on, I’ve got someone on the other line.

It’s for you.