NNA proposes new Outside County subclass to USPS

May 1, 2022

The National Newspaper Association has requested a major change in the way newspapers are handled by the U.S. Postal Service. It is seeking a new category for Outside County mail, a mailing class that was first set up in 1879.

PENSACOLA, Florida — The National Newspaper Association has requested a major change in the way newspapers are handled by the U.S. Postal Service. It is seeking a new category for Outside County mail, a mailing class that was first set up in 1879.

“This request from NNA is momentous and game-changing,” NNA Chair Brett Wesner, president of Wesner Publications, Cordell, Oklahoma, said. “After decades of painfully inconsistent delivery outside our counties of publication, we have concluded that only a major redesign of the system is going to address the problem. Specifically, we are seeking a newspaper mail subclass within the category that USPS generally calls Periodicals. No change in our core distribution Within County is being sought.”

The proposal was sent to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and assigned to a product development team within the USPS Marketing Department in April.

NNA Postal Committee Chair Matthew Paxton, publisher of the News-Gazette, Lexington, Virginia, explained the intended new subclass.

“Basically, we are trying to do whatever we can to keep individual newspaper copies out of mail processing plants,” Paxton said. “After a 9-month service performance task force with USPS, we have realized that places USPS calls ‘pain points’ are just big stuck places for us in the plants. The newspapers go in, get transported through dock transfers, bundle sorters and manual sorting cages before they get loaded back onto trucks to go to the next plant so the same actions can occur again. In each of these stages, we have opportunities for delay, misdirection and mistaken handlings.”

Paxton said Interlink Inc. CEO Brad Hill, NNA Executive Director Lynne Lance and NNA General Counsel Tonda Rush had worked with USPS since August to diagnose problems. NNA Vice Chair John Galer, publisher of the Hillsboro (Illinois) Journal-News, and other NNA members submitted their mailing data for study.

“We are all frustrated with the loss of subscribers because of mail problems,” Paxton said. “I think this is the first time NNA has tried to take the machinery apart to see why it isn’t working. Now we see why, and we have offered a solution.”

The NNA/USPS task force will examine changes in mail preparation designed to keep newspaper bundles in flats trays as long as possible as they travel through networks, with individual piece sortings occurring only when trays near their final destinations. The task force also will push for better scanning of the trays as they travel so visibility in USPS portals will improve, to allow publishers to spot points of delay in the system.

Paxton said the changes would be complex and would require significant data analytics from USPS. The intention is for the new service to be optional, so publishers can still use an older and slower service if price sensitivities are the dominant concern.

“We don’t expect to see this change in 2022,” Paxton said, “but we are pushing to have some phases implemented as soon as possible and to roll out an overall new design as close to January 2023 as we can.”

Wesner said NNA’s Board of Directors had deliberated over the costs and consequences of the request.

He said, “We recognize that if and when USPS completes this redesign, we will have to make changes in our operations. We most likely will see some type of premium price for using this class, but within the framework of existing Periodicals rates. We hope we will get what we most need: timely delivery.”