{"id":38145,"date":"2025-07-11T15:01:39","date_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=38145"},"modified":"2025-07-11T15:01:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-11T20:01:39","slug":"national-newspaper-association-rips-double-postal-increase-among-comments-to-prc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2025\/07\/11\/national-newspaper-association-rips-double-postal-increase-among-comments-to-prc\/","title":{"rendered":"National Newspaper Association rips double postal increase among comments to PRC"},"content":{"rendered":"

7\/11\/25 – The Postal Service should only be permitted to raise postage rates annually; the National Newspaper Association told the Postal Regulatory Commission<\/a>.<\/p>\n

NNA is responding to a request by the PRC for comments on proposed new rules that would stop the semi-annual increases that publishers have seen most years since 2021.<\/p>\n

Matthew Paxton IV, NNA\u2019s senior delegate to the USPS Mailers Technical Advisory Committee,\u00a0commented in a letter<\/a> to the PRC that some NNA members had previously thought dividing USPS\u2019s\u00a0hefty price increases into two segments might help publishers to absorb the new costs. But he said: \u201cWe have concluded that the disruptive effects of semi-annual increases outweigh whatever flexibility it provides our smaller members in absorbing the increases.\u201d<\/p>\n

He cited the costs of software updates, USPS\u2019s\u00a0own inability to keep its internal software in sync with new rates and the disruptive effects of higher prices in general as factors that lead NNA to support the PRC\u2019s proposal to limit the increases to once a year. But, he warned, unless the scale of recent increases is tempered by PRC regulation, the impact upon newspapers will continue to be harmful.<\/p>\n

Periodicals mail volume, which includes newspapers, has fallen by almost a third since the steep increases began in 2021. Slow delivery, combined with the higher rates, has\u00a0pushed customers away from the postal system.<\/p>\n

Paxton, publisher of The News-Gazette in Lexington, Virginia,\u00a0was joined in his comments by NNA\u2019s full postal delegation to the Postmaster General\u2019s Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC): former NNA Chair John Galer, publisher of The Journal-News in Hillsboro (Illinois); Bradley Hill, CEO of Interlink, Berrien Springs, Mich., a postal software supplier; and Lynne Lance, NNA executive director.<\/p>\n

The group also reminded the PRC that it has not required USPS to measure the true cost of Within County newspaper delivery since 2007. While the PRC imposes a 2% surcharge each year on Periodicals newspapers for failing to cover USPS costs for their handling and delivery, neither USPS nor the PRC have tried to nail down the actual costs to USPS for delivering Within County newspapers.<\/p>\n

The PRC is pushing USPS to do a better job of giving discounts for mailers\u2019 extra work that actually matches the costs USPS is able to avoid when mailers do private hauling, extra presorting, better address management and the like. But, Paxton argues, it is impossible to match publishers\u2019 contributions to saving USPS money if no one knows what the true postal costs are.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are really in a watershed moment,\u201d Paxton said. \u201cUSPS is in deep financial trouble. The high rates and tone-deaf indifference to customer needs for the past few years have sent this system into a tailspin. The PRC seems to be trying to find some levers to help pull the ship back on course. NNA has been doing its part to help avoid disaster.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have told the Commission that we are here to help it understand better ways to get newspapers into subscribers\u2019 hands. Our MTAC delegation goes to Washington four times a year to do just that. We hope we are able to work together with postal management and the regulators to avoid even more serious problems in the months ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read the NNA letter to the PRC by clicking\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

7\/11\/25 – The Postal Service should only be permitted to raise postage rates annually; the National Newspaper Association told the Postal Regulatory Commission. NNA is responding to a request by the PRC for comments on proposed new rules that would stop the semi-annual increases that publishers have seen most years since 2021. Matthew Paxton IV, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38145"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38147,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38145\/revisions\/38147"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}