10/08/2015

Post office makes situation worse for nation's newspapers

Editorial from The Lebanon Reporter

Is the U.S. Postal Service trying to destroy America’s newspapers?

Based upon the evidence, you have to wonder.

The postal service — faced with we would argue is an overstated assessment of its pension obligations — has been cutting like crazy. Services have been consolidated. Regional centers have been eliminated. And the delivery has been slowed.

It’s a heck of a strategy when the USPS is trying to compete with email and the Internet, but it’s the strategy currently being employed.

While all postal customers have seen the impact, none have suffered as much as second-class postal customers: America’s newspapers.

Our friends at The Daily Standard in Celina tell us that on Sept. 21 they received editions of The Commercial Review published on Sept. 3 and Sept. 9, and the Sept. 9 edition was the most recent they had received.

We’ve seen similar problems receiving The Daily Standard in Jay County.

Meanwhile, the postal service continues to curry favor with the direct mail — aka junk mail — industry. The two are so closely in bed with one another that they may as well schedule their nuptials.

But there’s just one problem.

The last we knew, newspapers are an essential instrument in any democracy. Junk mail is not.

Faced with the challenges this country now encounters — hyper-partisanship, a deluge of misinformation and disinformation, and big problems to solve — you’d think that the U.S. Postal Service could, at the very least, play a neutral role.

Given an opportunity to make a positive difference, the USPS has opted instead to make a tough situation even worse. Does that make any sense at all?