Alabama’s Fourth Congressional District is blessed to have many local newspapers. They
help bring attention to local news that too often gets overlooked by large newspapers.
When you get your hometown newspaper, you see that it’s packed with all the happenings
in town, smaller communities, and the county as a whole.
You’ll find stories about recent city council meetings, a letter to the editor from someone
upset about decisions made at the recent city council meeting, stories of small-town heroes, and
the highs and lows of the local high school teams.
Like a lot of traditional media, local newspapers have struggled in a world now dominated
by people who choose to scroll TikTok or Facebook to get “news” rather than thumb through the
local newspaper.
I certainly understand people who feel the national media is out of touch with Americans,
but the majority of local papers are not dominated by politics and bias. They are filled with
stories about your neighbors.
Local newspapers, particularly the ones that come to homes via the postal service, are
facing another problem. That problem is the United States Postal Service (USPS).
As bulk mail rates keep increasing, so do the delivery times. Therefore, newspapers are not
getting to homes and businesses in a timely manner.
How do I know this?
Well, I’ve heard from the editors of local papers who have told me about the delays in
delivery. I’ve also witnessed it in my own district offices.
Here is a recent example: the Feb. 21 edition of The Blount Countian newspaper was
delivered to my Cullman office on March 19.
That’s just two days short of a month. This has happened with the other papers my office
subscribes to as well. They arrive weeks after they were published and delivered to USPS.
The local postal carriers are fine people who are dedicated to their jobs. The issue lies in
the overall distribution system. When rates are increasing at a steady pace, but service is going
down at the same time, something is wrong.
We recently received a request from the editor of The Arab Tribune to try and find out why
his papers were being delivered so late. In turn, my office reached out to USPS.
The response we received was not the one we had hoped for. We were told that the issue
had been looked into and that they hadn’t found an issue.
I strongly disagree.
Newspapers – or any mail – showing up weeks late is most certainly an issue.
I’m writing this letter to urge the U.S. Postal Service to address this situation, which has
gotten to a point where newspaper customers are canceling their subscriptions.
This is not good for our local communities, our newspapers, and it’s certainly not good for
the U.S. Postal Service.
It’s time to fix this problem!
I will also be following up legislatively as to how this problem can be solved.
