Magazines Feeling Postal Pinch
The cost of getting magazines into your mailbox will shoot up July 15. How much? It depends.
Magazine publishers are facing a radical postage rate restructuring that favors those with large circulations and transfers costs to small- and mid-circulation publications.
Past increases to periodical postage were applied fairly equally across all publications. But this time, things are drastically different — and potentially damaging to the diversity of voices that our founders strove to foster when they created the national postal system.
Our respective magazines — the Nation and the National Review — sit on opposite ends of the political spectrum and disagree on nearly every issue. But we concur on this: These proposed postal rate hikes are deeply unfair.
It is not simply that we want to avoid a massive increase in our mailing costs, though that is a factor. More important to us is that we believe in a vibrant marketplace of ideas (where we each think our ideas will prevail). We are not afraid of intellectual competition; we welcome it.
For this latest round of rate hikes, the U.S. Postal Service proposed a 12% increase that would have affected magazines more or less equitably. Then, in an unprecedented move, that plan was rejected by the Postal Regulatory Commission, the body responsible for setting rates. Instead, it approved a complicated pricing system based on a proposal by Time Warner Inc., the largest magazine publisher in the country. Rather than base rates on total weight and total number of pieces mailed, the new, complex formula is full of incentives that take into account packaging, shape, distance traveled and more.
It adds up to this: discounts for some periodicals; as far as we can see, mostly the huge-circulation titles associated with firms like Time Warner. At smaller magazines like ours, rates will go up 15% to 25%. Research by McGraw-Hill Cos. concludes that the rate increases for some small-circulation publications could hit 30%.
Time Warner and the Postal Regulatory Commission say this scheme rewards efficiency. But the rates appear to have been adopted with little research into their effect on publishers and with no meaningful public input.
How will small magazines that operate on the economic margins — yet have an outsized effect on public discourse — accommodate $500,000 (in the case of the Nation and the National Review) in additional postage expense? Will we be forced to cut back on reporting, raise our prices, reduce our staffs or our number of pages to stay afloat? For some titles, the change may prove fatal. It certainly will make it more difficult to start a new magazine, and publishing will be less competitive as a result.
Time Warner and the postal commission seem to have little understanding of the crucial role the Postal Service has played in establishing an open marketplace of ideas. It has always been a central policy of the Postal Service to use its pricing mechanism to encourage smaller publications and competition.
Since the time of James Madison and the founders in the 1790s, it has been understood that low rates for small publications make it possible to have the rich, open and diverse media that a self-governing people require. This is what is at stake today. And because so much of the material online originates in print magazines, these postal rates could have the unintended effect of shrinking the digital marketplace of ideas as well.
We urge the relevant congressional committees to hold a hearing to investigate this coming crisis before it is too late. The last 215 years of postal policy were instrumental in the creation of the extraordinary free press we have in the U.S. today. We should not begin to overturn this magnificent tradition.
Teresa Stack is president of the Nation. Jack Fowler is publisher of the National Review.
© 2007 The Los Angeles Times
Here, here!
Call your representative!
“Magazine publishers are facing a radical postage rate restructuring that favors those with large circulations and transfers costs to small- and mid-circulation publications.”
Sounds a lot like our economy. I cannot help but recall, with some amusement, how the French revolutionaries dealt with the gross imbalance of power and wealth in their time. Maybe America’s aristocracy would do well to recall it as well.
The jump in postal rates increases the viability of non-postal means of physical delivery. For example, it becomes more attractive to start a walking route in your neighborhood, both delivering progressive magazines, papers and videos, and picking them up/ redistributing them for a 2nd and 3rd reading.
Of course non-physical communication is gradually improving; speed and reliability of cable/dsl/wireless. And basic changes like YouTube. Community wireless is more attractive than ever, with MIT Roofnet implementations. Progressives alas, lack awareness of P2P architectures at all levels,
TOdd
With all the discouraging news in the world, for some reason this stealth manipulation of the postal rates by Time Warner . . . with the collusion of the U.S. Postal Service. . . well, this story is breaking my heart more than all the other bad news. I think it is getting harder and harder to find out what is really going on. When I first heard about these postal hikes, I was truly sickened. Where did I first learn about it, btw? Here on commondreams. I spend a lot of time reading lots of media every day of my life and I have only seen this story on commondreams. yeah, it’s great that the editors of The Nation and The National Review got together and wrote an op-ed piece for the LAtimes. . . but, er, what the heck took you so long? Why isn’t the small media affected by these hikes pummeling every available media resource to get this story out?
And what the f”’ can I do? I wrote to my elected representatives. So what? Is Moveon.org on this story?
Hey, Teresa and Jack. . . have you asked every single journalist you know to write a story about this in their publications? Are you tapping your personal media network? Because, I gotta tell you, my network doesn’t have much of a voice. When I first heard about this, I emailed every person in my email list. I actually know some journalists, some award-winning and they told me they already knew all about it . . . but none of them have, er, written about it.
Hey, the chuckleheads in Congress don’t give a rip about this story. These are the same bozos who just ignored the American public and funded Bush’s war with no timetable. Our putative representatives have no incentive to help small media. . . they are beholden to big media. The creeps who just financed Bush’s war after the last election, which was resounding against the war, you don’t expect any of these cowardly, craven knitwits to, um, risk any donations from corporate media by, er, helping the small press? The wolves have penetrated the henhouse. The coup happened in 2000. And you gotta admit, the neocons were smart. They didn’t do it with traditional weapons: they did it with machines, didn’t they? voting machines and hanging chads and obsfucation.
Geez, we’re in trouble.