Magazine publishers say that they’re already dealing with complaints from customers about lost, damaged, and late magazines, and that the latest USPS proposal to regain solvency could worsen the problem with even more staff cuts, fewer processing centers, and an end to Saturday delivery. The USPS says ending six-day delivery would save $2.7 billion annually by 2016, and network consolidation would save $4.1 billion. But even so, some of those changes would have to be approved by Congress; as of this writing, lawmakers were struggling to intervene before the May 15 expiration of a moratorium on closing post offices and processing centers. (Voting to shut down your own districts’ facilities is tantamount to political suicide—almost sure to become a re-election campaign issue.)
Meanwhile, publishers must decide how to deal with slower and less-consistent delivery. William Falk, editor-in-chief of The Week magazine, took the bold step of printing an editor’s letter addressing the problem in his February 3 issue. Of the magazine’s 535,000 subscribers, about 100,000 of them got a letter, in zip codes with the most complaints. In the note, Falk placed the blame for late deliveries directly on the postal service. “The Week magazine prints every Wednesday night at exactly the same time—every week, without fail,” the letter read. “We then pay a very substantial fee to have copies trucked to 70 postal distribution facilities around the country every Thursday morning. This is an investment The Week has made in order to speed delivery of your copy to a postal facility in your area.” According to the USPS’s delivery standards, the letter continued, readers should expect to receive their copies on Friday or Saturday, but that, “to our dismay, that consistent delivery has eroded….”
In an interview, Falk explained that he had heard from readers who, after getting their copies of The Week on Friday or Saturday for years, were now getting it on Monday or Tuesday, or even later. For a weekly magazine, one specifically designed to summarize and contextualize the previous week’s news, that delay makes a huge difference to the magazine’s relevance. “Saturday really is a good day for us to arrive for people, because we have cultural content that helps them plan their weekend… and it’s the chance to look back at the week that’s just occurred,” said Falk. “We don’t really know what we’ll do if they end Saturday delivery—we’ve talked about it, but we haven’t made a decision yet.”
One solution that some publishers at the summit said they were considering is to move their editorial deadline forward, to accommodate earlier postal service deadlines and slower, less-reliable delivery. The drawback to this option is obvious: Now that print magazines are competing for readers’ attention with constantly updated online content, adding more lead time to their delivery seems risky. Closing issues earlier also complicates transactions with advertisers, who like to be able to tinker with copy and placement until the last minute.
Another solution—one heavily discussed at the MPA event, which was sponsored in part by several alternative delivery services—is to opt out of the USPS and go for private delivery. Women’s Wear Daily, a time-sensitive fashion trade paper owned by Condé Nast, already offers hand delivery to its readers in New York City. But for other types of magazines, and readers in less densely populated parts of the country, alternate delivery services can be prohibitively expensive. Publishers at the summit also said they felt their subscribers wanted to get their magazines in their mailboxes, rather than tossed at the end of the driveway like a newspaper. By law, only the USPS can put mail in mailboxes.
Then there is digital delivery. Readers are already accustomed to going online for both short- and long-form magazine content, and sales of tablets and e-readers are soaring. Many magazines already sell PDF versions of their print issues to read on Kindles, Nooks, and iPads (Zinio, the largest service of its kind, currently has 5,500 clients, including CJR). More and more magazines are experimenting with digital sales through the Amazon Marketplace and Apple’s Newsstand. Why not stop delivering altogether?
This could be fixed, according to Charley:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/the-post-office-lives-8757430
"As has become clear over the past five years, conservative politicians have decided that we don't need a post office any more. Under cover of technology, and using the rise of e-mail as an alibi, the Congress quite deliberately has engaged in a campaign to make the United States Postal System an unsustainable concern. They've done it quite well, actually. In 2006, when nobody was paying attention, a lame duck session of Congress, in which there was still a Republican majority, passed a neat little poison-pill called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required the USPS to pre-fund 75 years worth of health-care benefits over the next 10 years. (No other government entity ever has been required to do anything like this.) Among other things, this prevented the USPS from raising rates, or doing anything else that would lift the weight of the fiscal millstone that had been hung upon it. That this was a deliberate act of sabotage was revealed by the fact that a report indicated that, absent this pre-payment requirement, the USPS would be running a profit of $2.5 billion. With the requirement, the service is $24 billion in the hole."
So it could be fixed by relieving the prefund requirement, bumping up rates, small adjustments. Buuuut
"So why are conservative politicians breaking so much rock trying to rid us of the curse of government mail delivery? Go back to that quote from Park and Markovitz:
The post office was 'the one concrete link between every community of individuals and the Federal government' that functioned 'importantly in the human structure of the community.... [The post office] brought to the locality a symbol of government efficiency, permanence, service, and even culture.
The entire modern conservative movement consists of an ongoing attempt to sever the relationship of a self-governing people to their government, to break down the concept of a political commonwealth."
You know what the private and public sector were doing with their pensions? No, not prefunding them. Killing them:
http://www.cfr.org/foreign-policy-history/roaring-nineties-new-history-worlds-most-prosperous-decade/p6492
"what they did during the '90s is they were allowed to use projections assuming a nine percent return on their investments and stock. What that meant was that to provide the benefits that they promised to their workers in 20 years, 25 years, or 30 years, you didn't have to put away very much money. And that meant that they didn't have to put away very much money. They could treat the rest as profits. And so that gave an uplifted view of profits.[which meant an "uplifted view" for executive compensation and tax cuts- see Ellen Schultz]
Now, two things happen. First they didn't get the nine percent return over the period of 2000 to 2002, 2003, it wasn't, they didn't actually increase at the 27 percent that they had expected."
So while all other enterprises are gutting their future liabilities, by making them unpayable because they aren't bothering to fund them (and then claiming financial crises are to blame for not paying high risk returns on meagre investments), conservatives have mandated the postal service pay 65 years worth of liabilities in this 10 year period.
This is episode #1702934 of "Government is not the problem, conservatives are,"
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 14 May 2012 at 12:16 PM
Thimbles,
It might be best if you got your facts correct before spouting off: In the 2006 elections, Democrats won both the House of Representatives (233 Democrats, 202 Republicans) and the Senate (49 Democrats, 49 Republicans, and 2 Independents caucusing with the Democrats) as well as the majority of state governorships (28-22). The above article was interesting and I quickly scrolled down to see what comments might have additional suggestions for we publishers who still depend on a thriving and working post office. But alas, only a lot of jibber jab posted by someone on the Obama staff. This is not the place for your unrelated blogs. And again, please get your facts straight if you are going to blab.
#2 Posted by patricia, CJR on Tue 15 May 2012 at 08:28 AM
Hey idiot, before accusing me of getting my facts wrong, being on the Obama staff, and blabbing you should get a tiny bit familiar with the facts discussed:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/109/hr6407
(Yeah, that's the 109th congress, the famed WORST CONGRESS EVER - at least until recent idiot conservatives decided they have no higher duty than to stop the elected 'Kenyan' by busting every part of the country they can touch)
get a bit familiar with my posts: (I must be the worst Obama staffer ever since I spend half my time slagging 'the boss')
and you should perhaps look in the mirror and check your empty head for a spout.
Thanks for your contribution, now blow away lightweight.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 15 May 2012 at 11:25 AM
In other news
"Government is not the problem, conservatives are," not that we'd ever know it from the 'liberal media'.
"Last month, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein published an Op ed and a book making the extremely controversial argument that both parties aren’t equally to blame for what ails Washington...
It turns out neither man has been invited on to the Sunday shows even once to discuss this thesis. As Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum note, these are among the most quoted people in Washington — yet suddenly this latest topic is too hot for the talkers, or not deemed relevant at all...
“The piece focused on press culpability — it would be hard to find a more sensitive issue for the media than the question of whether they’re doing their job,” Ornstein said. “We got tons of emails from some of the biggest reporters in the business, saying, `We’ve raised this in the newsroom, and editors just brush it aside.’”..
This is curious. Is “experts confirm that, yes, one side is more to blame than the other, and journalists should say so” really too hot a topic for the Sunday shows? Is it not relevant or interesting?
Howie? Dave? Bob? George? Candy? No interest in this?
Anyone?
Hello?"
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 15 May 2012 at 12:26 PM
Working for a newspaper, we'd love it if Magazines would just UPS their copies to our printing plants, and we could deliver them to the driveways for less than the post office charges. There are newspapers covering much of the country with home delivery. This should be the solution. I don't know why more magazines aren't doing this. It would help subsideze the newspaper delivery networks, and thereby help keep newspapers in business too.
#5 Posted by Annonymous, CJR on Tue 15 May 2012 at 04:07 PM
Do not put too much fault for late magazines on the USPS. I have found through at least 2 of my 9+ magazines, that the late ones are late because of the US agents' sending the magazines late in the week instead of the date assigned or that they double up. My London magazines come in 2's usually on the date given for the second one. The other seems to think since he's in NYC and I am in California, he can skip one every so often. I notify the publisher in London and Wallah!!! it shows up 3-4 days after the notice and the next 2-3 come right on time. Magazine publishers must also oversee the actions of their agents since those here in the States are just as likely to use agents as those overseas. Those agents can be just as careless and/or lazy as those whose publishers are across the ocean. Also, those of you that do get mail regularly, get to know your carrier and when it's the holiday time--esp Xmas, send
him/her a token of your appreciation for being on time. Don't require perfection since many times your late items may be late because the one who filled in, carried only 1st class mail and left the heavy things--magazines-- to your regular one later.
#6 Posted by trish, CJR on Thu 24 May 2012 at 02:49 PM