Weekly papers decry proposed Postal Service rule

A proposed U.S. Postal Service rule may be the last straw for some weekly newspapers that depend on the mail to reach most of their readers, the editor-publisher of a crusading weekly in the Texas Panhandle wrote in a letter reprinted in this month's newsletter of the International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors.

"Our number will surely be smaller" because most papers will fail the "droop test," in which a paper is dangled from a flat surface, writes Laurie Ezzell Brown, left, of The Canadian Record. The old rule allowed a paper to droop four inches and still qualify for discount mailing rate; under the proposed rule, if a paper droops more than three inches, its rates will go up 54 to 78 percent, according to the National Newspaper Association, the main lobbying group for weeklies. "NNA hasn’t seen any evidence than one inch of ‘droop’ more or less is going to affect handling costs one iota," NNA Postal Chairman Max Heath told USPS in a letter.

What galls many weekly publishers is that the Postal Service increasingly fails to live up to the last word in its name: "I am interrupted repeatedly by telephone calls from subscribers to The Record in surrounding communities who did not receive this week’s newspaper in the mail today," Brown writes. "Each caller has told us how important the newspaper is to him, and how much he enjoys reading it." She is especially moved by those who refer to it as "my Canadian Record," which to us helps define whether a newspaper is a community paper or not.

The Record is online, but "We find that most of our customers — even the young ones — prefer the more tactile experience of leafing through the pages of their community newspaper," Brown writes. "If there is a last straw, this new and rather aptly named 'droop' test may well be it. Most lightweight periodicals like newspapers will almost certainly fail the new deflection test." And she adds, "The new standards are likely to affect the Postal Service’s delivery standards as well, promising more calls of complaint and more — yes, more — cancellations of subscriptions by readers who alue the product we create but have lost faith in our ability to deliver it."

Brown's letter is a strong case for rural newspapers. The ISWNE newsletter is online here. The comment period for the new rule ended Jan. 13.