Trade groups for weekly and daily newspapers team up for lobbying and helping members with postal and digital issues

The leading trade groups for daily and weekly newspapers are teaming up for lobbying in Washington, D.C., and to help small daily papers deal with the ins and outs of circulation by mail. 

The News Media Alliance (formerly the Newspaper Association of America) and the National Newspaper Association, which includes some dailies, "have created a joint policy group to assist their members in the newspaper industry with postal issues and public policy," they said in a release.

NNA, whose members make much more use of the mail, will take the lead on postal issues. Many small daily newspapers have shifted to mail delivery, and NNA will help NMA members with case-specific postal problems, and the NNA Foundation will make its postal training available to them.

NMA will advise NNA on digital publishing policies, "on which it has sharpened its expertise since the breakup of the Bell telephone companies in the 1990s," the release said. "NMA will continue to factor in the concerns of community newspapers in its advocacy on important industry issues like the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, and the two groups will form a consultative task force to help the industry to speak with one voice on other critical issues, such as journalism and First Amendment advocacy." NMA manages the news-media industry’s News Media for Open Government coalition.

“These are the two organizations that have been the voices for newspapers in Washington for more than a century, NNA representing the smaller newspapers and NMA the larger ones,” said NNA Chair Brett Wesner, a publisher in Cordell, Okla. “The demands and expenses of doing this work have accelerated in recent years and we see that this trajectory is going to continue. It seemed to both of us that we could do a better job if we eliminate duplication and amplify our voices wherever possible.”