Critics: Postal Service plans imperil community newspapers

[TexasTowelie]

The U.S. Postal Service’s plan to raise mailing rates could present one more damaging blow to community newspapers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and advertising declines, a trade group says.

Rates on periodicals would increase by more than 8 percent as of Aug. 29, according to agency filings. The price jump is part of a broad plan pushed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to overhaul mail operations.

The impact of the periodical rate increase is expected to be felt most by small daily and weekly newspapers, as well as rural newspapers, which depend on the Postal Service since they have shifted from using independent contractors for deliveries.

In response, publishers potentially could be forced to further reduce staff or forgo home deliveries entirely and instead send papers to communal news racks, or even shutter their papers, said Paul Boyle, senior vice president at the News Media Alliance, a trade association representing nearly 2,000 news organizations in the U.S.

Read more: https://lmtribune.com/business/critics-postal-service-plans-imperil-community-newspapers/article_5b0b521e-efc2-58e1-a1fb-f7427c5f2524.html
(Lewiston Tribune)

[jimfields33]

1. I'd rather see bulk mail be raised like by 10 times the price.

Getting so much bulk mail which ends up in the garbage/shredded us such a waste to the environment by fuel of postal trucks, trees, ink, ect. I’d love a poll to see how Many Americans read junk mail. I bet it’s less then 20 percent.

[Dial H For Hero]

2. I'm a retired postal window clerk, and over the years I had dozens of customers ask me if we could

stop delivering junk mail to them. The answer, of course, was that we couldn’t because the sender had paid us to deliver it. One customer actually screamed at me nonstop for a full minute when I told them that.

[jimfields33]

4. Wow. Yes it's annoying to get junk mail.

But I’d never scream or be rude over it. Thank you for the years you helped all of us.

[Delmette2.0]

3. Of course he did.

That's the Trumpian thing to do.

[Blue Owl]

5. My blood pressure goes up when I hear the word DeJoy

Every day that piece of shit is in the Postal Service's employment is another nail in the USPS's coffin...

[Midnight Writer]

6. Perhaps we could reduce the non-profit exemption for mega-churches and evangelists

and use it instead for periodicals.

The "non-profit" churches could still put out their message in a periodical format themselves, but on a more level cost basis.

It kills me to see "churches" getting the cheapest rate for sending out scams like "annointing oil" or "prayer blankets". They are selling bogus products and they are getting rich from it. Why do we subsidize that?