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Delivery issues, rising rates discussed at NNA Postal Forum
By Gregory Glass - National Newspaper Association
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Representatives from Price Publications, Inc. were among some 50 newspaper executives in Washington, D.C. Friday to discuss ongoing issues like slow delivery and rising rates with officials from the U.S. Postal Service.
PPI President Kim N. Price and PPI Operations Manager Jay Goodwin were among the delegates at the National Newspaper Association’s 2008 Postal Summit held at L’Enfant Plaza, home to the USPS, July 10-11. The two represented the Alabama Press Association at the meeting.
“The best way to reach people in Washington is to go there,” said Price, the state chairman of the Alabama Press Association’s Postal Committee and a past president of the APA. “I was impressed with the approach postal officials, especially the Deputy Postmaster is taking to make sure community newspapers remain a vital part of their delivery priorities. While we have many issues as an industry with delivery and rising rates, these issues are being dealt with. Many times we find that the USPS is like any big organization; there are communication problems and the answers do not get quickly to the local level.
“We’re fortunate in Elmore County to have postal officials who work with us to resolve our delivery issues because they understand the role our community newspapers play here.”
Although the USPS is building centralized automation facilities, postal officials assured the National Newspaper Asso-ci-ation that they are considering the continuation of entering newspapers at local post offices. Loss of local offices has not been proposed for this area, Price said.
NNA has fought to prevent local post offices from closing, but the Postal Service stopped well short of a commitment due to budget issues.
“The Postal Service is facing a $600 million“plus financial loss this fiscal year and it is a major problem. More competition, loss of mail volume to the Internet and competition from overnight providers has put the Postal Service in a tough spot. Under the new Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, there is only so much the USPS can do to cut costs, and raise revenues,” Price added.
“We were told that every May we will likely see an increase “ the rate newspapers are paying “ because the USPS will determine in February the previous year’s rate of inflation and compare it with the consumer price index, and those factors will tell us what our rates will be once decided by USPS. We hope they will hold them down, because we cannot pass on annual increases to our subscribers,” Price added.
Attendees had a face-to-face discussion with Deputy Post-master General Patrick Dona-hoe, who told the association that Periodicals Mailers (including newspapers) “get the best service standards of anybody,” with 65 percent of all periodicals delivered within one day, and that in-county Periodicals are the only class of mail where volumes haven’t dropped year-to-year.
The USPS is required to provide Periodicals Class Mail customers with service comparable to First Class Mail, a feat made easier by the fact that many large magazines and most newspapers drop their mail at a point close to or at the delivery post office. The problem comes when newspapers are transferred from one major hub to another.
“So happens I got a call Monday from a Herald subscriber who lives outside of Atlanta, Georgia. The subscriber told me he just received his June 23rd newspaper, and two others on July 12. That is certainly not the same service as First Class, so I wrote the Deputy Post-master with this example because he told us while we were there to share our issues with him and his staff.”
Donahoe also laid out his plans for keeping the Postal Service solvent in an era when “revenue is worse than flat,” including reducing employee ranks, consolidating facilities and an increased reliance on automation, including the radically new Flats Sequencing System, which sorts flat mail in delivery point sequence, the order in which the letter carrier delivers the mail. Flat mail is mail that ranks in size between a letter and a parcel and fits within specified USPS dimensions.
NNA members vigorously drove home the point that newspapers must have continued access to Destination Delivery Unit entry for service reasons, even as USPS embarks upon operational consolidation and new automation plans. The event concluded with no firm commitment from USPS authorities.
As part of NNA’s second Postal Summit, NNA members observed the USPS’s prototype FSS in action at the Dulles Processing and Distribution Center in northern Virginia. Dulles’ new FSS is now sorting “live” mail for delivery in the Northern Virginia area. It stands side by side with a permanent machine that will soon take over its functions as USPS works on deploying more machines around the nation. There will be 100 of them in total by the end of 2010.
Price and other members voiced a variety of concerns to Postal Service representatives and to Dan Blair, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, including the elimination of Saturday delivery. Last month, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) was successful in attaching an amendment to the 2009 Financial Services and General Government appropriations measure, requiring the Postal Service to study the merits of a five-day delivery system.
“The USPS wants increased business from newspapers, and we’re responding, then on the other hand they tell us they’re considering dropping Saturday delivery. It’s either the chicken or the egg here,” Price said.
The measure was approved by the House Appropriations Committee on June 25, but is not likely to become law. Kingston, a long-time advocate of five-day delivery, is on record calling Saturday delivery “a waste” of fuel and other resources and “a perfect example of government waste that is driving up the price at the pump.”
Other upper-level Postal Service employees meeting with NNA members included Joe Moeller, manager of pricing; Tim Gribben, manager of mail technology strategy and Becky Dobbins, manager of service management development.
USPS executive Jerry Lease discussed ways to save money when mailing periodical class mail and discussed how newspapers can correct change of address delays that generally take weeks to process.
“Our voice was heard in Washington and we are confident any issues newspapers have at the local level can be resolved swiftly through proper channels.”
Robert G Villa wrote on Jul 16, 2008 1:32 PM: