LITTLE ROCK — You must have heard that the U.S. Postal Service plans to end Saturday mail delivery.
Newspapers that rely on the postman for Saturday delivery of their publications certainly heard it.
“Some of our dailies have gone back to using the mail to deliver. But any publication, whether it’s weekly with a late week edition or a daily with a Friday edition to be mailed on Saturday, they’re basically being disenfranchised by closing the post office on Saturday,” said Tom Larimer, executive director of the Arkansas PressAssociation.
It’s “a huge issue” for those who are relying on the postal system to save on delivery costs, Larimer said.
The Carroll County News is printed on Tuesday and Friday,so it’s in news boxes and stores those days but it’s delivered on Wednesday and Saturday, said publisher Bob Moore.
What’s the solution?
Print the second edition on Thursday, Moore says.
“We’ll lose a lot of news and ad sales, but we don’t have an alternative.”
Earlier this month, the Postal Service told Congress that the heavily indebted quasi-governmental agency will have to simply stop Saturday delivery starting Aug. 1.
In the past, the service has asked the government to pleasegive them more money so they wouldn’t have to cut services.
This time, it is telling Congress that it will make cost-cutting moves, including becoming a five-day operation (except for packages on Saturdays. Post offices will still offer Saturday hours, too.).
Congress is not so sure the Postal Service has the authority to eliminate a delivery day, and so there is a continuing debate.
The Postal Service dates to the earliest days of the Republic, when it was established primarily to distribute newspapers.There is a famous inscription at a New York post office. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”
But now many see traditional house-to-house mail delivery as a dinosaur.
Small papers aren’t, if Arkansas is any indication. They fill community niches. The number of weeklies in the state stands at 95, and dailies are at 28, Larimer said. That’s down a little from a decade ago, but some of that is a result of mergers, he said. And circulation figures are flat or even up slightly, he said.
Now, dear reader, you must know that many small papers do not have their circulation figures audited. And that’s their business. Advertisers just have to trust them. But the important point is: these papers are important to their communities.
This is about timeliness, whether you get your hometown paper once a week or more often.
If you have a tip, call Jack Weatherly at (501) 378-3518 or e-mail him at
Business, Pages 67 on 02/17/2013