Bob Sillick | for E&P Magazine
Reporting and delivering the news are the two primary functions of the news publishing process. Although the disruption to and contraction of the news industry has created challenges for the reporting part of the process, there is plenty of news to report, and the public has a voracious appetite for more of it. Satisfying that appetite with prompt delivery of print editions has also been challenging for publishers.
The era of paperboys and adult carriers has ended for most newspapers as current subscribers are spread throughout the coverage area, including many in surrounding counties. Often, a small, local newspaper is the only publication in a multi-county portion of its state. Consequently, more rely on the United States Postal Service (USPS) to deliver their physical newspapers.
The necessary interaction between a small, local business with limited resources and a giant, quasi-federal bureaucracy often causes time-consuming complexities and frustrations for publishers of small, local newspapers. Given the USPS’s significant financial and operational issues for almost two decades, Louis DeJoy, U.S. Postmaster General, focuses on financial stability and, in his words, “delivering the mail.” Increasing the postage rate five times for all mail classes (and an overall increase of 50 percent for periodicals) between January 2021 and January 2024 clearly indicated the USPS’s precarious financial condition. Pushback from the public and the U.S. Congress caused the USPS to cancel another rate increase scheduled for early 2025.
As the chair of the National Newspaper Association (NNA) Postal Committee for 15 years, Matt Paxton, publisher of the Lexington (Virginia) News-Gazette, is an expert on the delivery of newspapers by the USPS. He wants to emphasize that all the members he and the committee assist have few, if any, problems with local post offices.
“The local postal people are great. They care about making on-time deliveries and are hard-working. They are a bit overwhelmed with all the massive changes to the entire delivery network,” Paxton said.
According to Paxton, the erosion in distant mail service is a specific issue affecting many small, local newspapers, including his, because periodical rates have increased multiple times in 2023-2024. For approximately 20 years, he has continuously received complaints from subscribers about waiting days for their newspapers or receiving multiple issues in one delivery.
On the ground in Hurley, Wisconsin, and Holton, Kansas
Paxton isn’t the only local publisher fielding those complaints. Autumn Hill, publisher of the Iron County Miner in Hurley, Wisconsin, and David Powls, publisher of the Holton Recorder in Holton, Kansas, reported to E&P that they are receiving increasing complaints about slow delivery.
Hill said the USPS 10-year plan, Delivering for America, is not working. The USPS initiated it in March 2021 to transform it “from an organization in financial and operational crisis to one that is self-sustaining and high performing.” Part of the plan is consolidating mail distribution centers in each state, and Hill said consolidation in Wisconsin is causing her problems.
“We are in the tippy top of Wisconsin, the farthest north in the state. Our closest mail processing center was in Wausau (approximately 125 miles from Hurley). The USPS closed that center and several others in Wisconsin and forced all our mail to go through Milwaukee (approximately 320 miles from Hurley) and Green Bay (approximately 220 miles from Hurley),” Hill said.
“[Before the processing center changes], if I mailed a letter or postcard in Hurley, addressed to someone in the next county, it went to a local processing center and directly to that county. Now, it must go to the extreme southern end of the state and then back north again.”
Hill said she receives unprecedented daily calls from subscribers asking why they aren’t receiving their papers. Her subscription-renewal postcards are also late. She’s convinced the paper has lost subscribers and will continue to lose subscribers because of the late-delivery issues.
Hill is encouraged by the letters Tammy Baldwin, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, and U.S. Representative Tom Tiffany, representing the district that includes Hurley, wrote to Louis DeJoy, U.S. Postmaster General. The September 2024 U.S. Congressional oversight hearing and questioning of DeJoy about problems with the Delivery for America plan may have resulted in postal inspectors from Chicago and Texas visiting the local post office in Hurley to examine the Iron County Miner’s delivery records.
Hill added that the Wisconsin Newspaper Association is also writing a letter to DeJoy, which member newspapers can sign to show their collective support for improving the delivery time of newspapers.
Powls’ experience is very similar to Hill’s. Previously, The Holton Recorder, published on Wednesday, was sent to a USPS Sectional Center Facility (SCF) in Topeka, approximately 35 miles from Holton. Powls said the sorted newspapers usually returned to Holton the next morning. The USPS consolidated its mail distribution centers in Kansas, so Powls had to start sending the Recorder to Kansas City for sorting and delivery approximately 90 miles from Holton.
“I want to make clear that our local mail delivery people are great. We don’t have issues locally. It’s sending the mail to the big metro area. We call it the black hole. We hope it comes back. Delivery has become slow and irregular since sending our newspapers to Kansas City. We’ve had many cases of our newspaper not being delivered. Some subscribers went several weeks without receiving the paper, and some never did. We’ve been in business for 42 years, and we’ve had more complaints this year than in all 42 years combined,” Powls said.
Powls solved some of his distant-mail delivery problems by driving 150 miles every Wednesday to the local post offices in nearby towns, in and outside Jackson County, with mailbags of newspapers for those subscribers.
“We’re bypassing shipping our newspapers to Kansas City, but we never had to do those deliveries to other post offices in the past. Now, we can maintain an acceptable schedule for our subscribers and receive much fewer phone calls and complaints,” Powls said.
He feels small, local newspaper publishers like himself must do more and more of the postal service’s work. For approximately 25 years, subscribers’ addresses on the newspapers had to be in carriers’ walk sequence. Powls explained that all newspapers must renew their Coding Accuracy Support System (CASS) certification every two months for $91.35 to obtain a rate discount. Although the certificate is supposed to put a subscriber list in a “walk sequence” for mail carriers, Powls had to incur the expense of sending his subscription list to a separate company to sort the addresses. More recently, he had to acquire plastic-tying machines instead of using string.
Powls’ other frustration is the constant changes from the USPS. “If we could just go a few years with no changes. … There’s always something new it wants to do and, often, before we have had an opportunity to see how the last [change] works.”
The U.S. Congress to the rescue
Considering many Americans’ lack of trust in the U.S. Congress, it and its members may seem like an unlikely source of solutions for the slow delivery of newspapers, but bipartisan action is occurring. The Deliver for Democracy Act was introduced in the Senate (S. 4378) and House of Representatives (H.R.9078) in May 2024. Senator Peter Welch (D-Vermont) and Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) are the sponsors of the Senate bill. Congressmen Robert B. Aderholt (R-Alabama) and Emanuel Cleaver, II (D-Missouri) are co-sponsors of the House bill.
The Senate bill would not allow the Postal Regulatory Commission to authorize any additional periodical rate increases by the USPS until it achieved a 95% on-time delivery performance for periodicals. Both NNA and the News/Media Alliance support this legislation.
Those bills are in response to the USPS’s inability to fulfill the delivery standard for periodicals included in DeJoy’s 10-year plan, Delivering for America. In the letter, Baldwin, as a co-sponsor of S. 4378, wrote to DeJoy, stating, “Already since the implementation of your policies, from 2023 to 2024, Wisconsin’s Two-Day Delivery Service Performance dropped from 91.4% delivered on time to 70.5%. Wisconsinites and their businesses, including local news, cannot afford further cuts by USPS leadership, nor the implementation of additional disastrous policies.”
U.S. Representative Jake LaTurner (R-Kansas-2) introduced H.R. 9839 in September 2024. It seeks amendments to the United States Code to modernize the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC).
Emily Bradbury, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, is encouraged by Representative LaTurner’s effort and the association’s work with the News/Media Alliance. She also met with PRC commissioners in September and found them sympathetic to the newspaper delivery issue in Kansas.
“This problem has not manifested itself during the last 20 years. It has become exceptionally bad in the last four to five years. The combination of our multiple issues with deliverability and the increasing postal rates during the last four years has been a double whammy for our papers. Many association members have had to absorb the 47.8% increase in those rates, but they can’t absorb any more,” Bradbury said.
Advice and solutions
Doug Wilson is vice president of production at Adams Publishing Group. He oversees the processing of more than 100 weeklies and other news products that the postal system delivers. Although there are some out-of-county delays, Wilson said Adams receives excellent service. His best advice for any newspaper is to establish a good working relationship with its local post office.
“The biggest challenges we face are that each postal unit handles the processing and delivery of our newspapers differently. Publishers must know each post office because some may like newspapers stacked on pallets and others in bags. Meeting with the local postmaster or the delivery team and agreeing on the details will alleviate many issues,” Wilson said.
Paxton advises publishers to promote their digital or e-editions to out-of-county subscribers, but many Americans still like to receive a physical newspaper. He also advocates publishers file a letter of request for Exceptional Dispatch. According to the USPS, “The Exceptional Dispatch Program allows authorized mailers to deposit mailings of time-sensitive Periodicals publications at a Destination Post Office(s) at times when the BMEU is closed. Exceptional Dispatch Periodical Mailings are transported by the mailer for the purpose of improving the delivery time of the publication.”
“If publishers must use Exceptional Dispatch with multiple post offices in their coverage areas, they must accept it as a cost of doing business to receive the level of service subscribers expect. The more of the work you can take from the post office and manage yourself, the happier your customers will be,” Paxton said.
Bob Sillick has held many senior positions and served a myriad of clients during his 47 years in marketing and advertising. He has been a freelance/contract content researcher, writer, editor and manager since 2010. He can be reached at bobsillick@gmail.com. This article was reprinted with permission from E&P.
