Your Right To Know Is in Danger

Oct 12, 2012

By Harry Bradley, Publisher and Mary-Justine Lanyon, Editor
Mountain News, Lake Arrowhead, CA

Imagine a world without newspapers, where there's no coverage of local government, no human interest stories to enliven and give texture to communities, no stories about local sports teams and none of the daily entertainment features subscribers have come to love.

Sound unlikely? Not really, thanks to an unprecedented, discriminatory action by the federal Postal Regulatory Commission to give a grossly unfair rate advantage to a giant direct-mail firm.

Valassis Communications Inc. received this incredible largesse from the federal government. Under a sweetheart deal given in the hopes of generating more revenue for a cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service, Valassis will get postal rate reductions of from 22 to 36 percent for mailers advertising national retailers of durable and semi-durable goods.

What this means is that these retailers‹whose eye is understandably on the bottom line in this shaky economy‹may pull advertising inserts from newspapers in favor of Valassis¹ direct mail and take ad revenues along with them.

The Postal Service has long faced hemorrhaging of its revenues. The situation has worsened in recent years as people e-mail instead of writing letters and increasingly pay their bills online.

Now, as its financial tipping point looms, the government¹s mail monopoly is sharing its pain with the newspaper industry and its customers, rather than doing what it should have done years ago‹cut expenses and reform its pension system.

Advertising is the life blood of newspapers. Single-copy sales account for only a small portion of a newspaper's income. Regardless of how readers feel about ads, without them newspapers could not be financially viable.

But should this revenue be lured away, publishers nationwide would have no choice but to cut their staffs, throwing thousands out of work and worsening already grim unemployment statistics.

Inevitably, this would diminish the breadth of news coverage and weaken the beneficial influence a free press has historically had in keeping the American people informed and safeguarding their freedoms.

Thomas Jefferson expressed aptly and succinctly the need to protect newspapers when he said, "The only security of all is in a free press."

Because of what it portends for newspapers and those who depend on them, what the Postal Service is doing is wrong. Because it is a government-run monopoly, the USPS belongs to the American people and should serve them impartially. It should treat all its customers fairly, and not give one customer a huge advantage over another.

The Postal Service's job is to deliver mail, not make game-changing decisions about which businesses thrive and which don¹t. And when the businesses harmed by the Postal Regulatory Commission¹s alarming decision are those defending the American public¹s crucial right to know, the damage is doubled.

Several congressional leaders, recognizing the harm this decision could mean for newspapers in their districts, want to overturn the Valassis deal. For the sake of a free and viable press, we hope they succeed.

But to muster the necessary backing in Congress, they'll need public support. We urge our readers to write their representatives in Washington to protest the Postal Service¹s unjustified and unprecedented intervention in the marketplace and to urge its repeal.

Please write to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 331 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C., 20510 or phone her at 202-228-3954, or to Sen. Barbara Boxer, 112 Hart Senate Office Building, or phone her at 202-224-3553.
Similar communications may be directed to Rep. Jerry Lewis, 2112 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510. His phone number is 202-225-5861.

Businesses, including newspapers, should succeed or fail on their own merits, not because the deck is stacked against them. To help preserve their right to know, we urge our readers to help make the playing field level again.