Community newspapers aid Postal Service push for financial relief but fight bid to end Sat. delivery

Rural newspaper publishers are helping the U.S. Postal Service lobby for a bill that would give it some financial relief but continuing to oppose its efforts to win congressional authority to end Saturday mail delivery.

Many small daily papers don't have Saturday editions but some do and have switched recently from home delivery to mail to cut costs. Many non-dailies that publish more than once a week use Saturday mail. "I think it is extremely important for rural America — and especially newspapers like us with Saturday mail delivery — to maintain six-day delivery," said Chip Hutcheson, publisher of The Times Leader in Princeton, Ky., and The Eagle Post at Fort Campbell.

Hutcheson is active in the National Newspaper Association, which lauded the House's 388-32 passage of HR 22, which would allows the USPS to reduce the payments it makes into a trust fund for future pension benefits, and urged its members to push for Senate passage. "No other government agency is required to prepay for its benefits on such an accelerated schedule," NNA said in a news release. For a release on a speech by Postmaster General John Potter, go here.