Hoosier State Press Association - The Indiana Publisher
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/614013
December 10, 2015 Page 5 N ewspapers welcomed the news that postage for periodicals mail won't increase in 2016. Although the U.S. Postal Service filed a price increase for its ship ping services products for next year, the National Newspaper Association notes the filing does not include a price increase for either peri odicals or firstclass mail. The Postal Regulatory Commission will review the prices for Commercial Priority Mail before they are scheduled to become effective on Jan. 17. Since there are no changes in periodicals mail pric ing, the postage statement (PS Form 3541) will remain unchanged, said Max Heath, postal chair for the National Newspaper Association. Some postmasters or clerks could mistakenly think news papers have to change forms, but the change will only affect packages and interna tional mail, Heath said. In other postal news, the National Newspaper Association reports that the long fight between the news paper industry and Valassis Inc. over the directmail com pany's special postage dis counts from the U.S. Postal Service appears to have ended quietly. Valassis filed a report in November declaring it car ried out no mailings eligible for the special discount. The filing follows a $100,000 penalty Valassis paid to the Postal Service in September. The conflict between news papers and its longtime insert customer began in April 2012 when the Postal Service requested a special contract rate for Valassis designed to pull advertis ing inserts out of Sunday newspapers and into a new weekend Valassis direct mail package. Tonda Rush, chief execu tive officer and general counsel for the National Newspaper Association, said if the program had launched and mailed 1 million quali fying mail pieces, Valassis could have earned a 22 per cent to 34 percent standard mail postage discount. The newspaper industry fought the proposal, even taking it to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Valassis launched pro grams in May 2013 in Atlanta, Phoenix and Wash ing ton, but mailings that year did not qualify under the agreement with the Postal Service. The National Newspaper Association said there were no mailings by Valassis in 2014 or 2015. NNA President Chip Hutch eson, publisher of the Princeton (Kentucky) Times- Leader, said the $100,000 Valassis fine was a fitting end to an unfortunate chap ter. "We want to think of this whole experience as an epi sode of recession fever at the Postal Service," Hutcheson said. "They were facing grim markets, as we all were, and grasping at straws." The fever ignited this idea of picking winners and losers in the advertising market place for the sake of maybe getting in some new mail vol ume, he said. NNA didn't think it would work, and it didn't, he said. "So USPS got $100,000 and spent unreported thousands in lawyers' and analysts' time," Hutcheson said. The newspaper industry and Valassis spent heav ily to advance their vari ous viewpoints, but in the end, there was no new mail. Newspapers were undoubted ly hurt in those test markets, and Valassis couldn't come up with the advertisers. "There is a moral to this story that every parent knows: Don't play favorites in the family," Hutcheson said. "We are glad this chapter is over, and we intend to contin ue to work with Valassis to develop its markets and with USPS to improve the mail." No postal increase for newspapers NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY POSTAL UPDATE National Newspaper Association report Promoting newspapers in education John Wolf, left, literacy specialist for the Indiana Department of Education, assumed leadership of the Indiana Newspaper in Education Advisory Board. Past President Justin Rumbach, managing editor at The Herald (Jasper), hands Wolf the gavel at an NIE board meeting. LIKE HOOSIER STATE PRESS ASSOCIATION ON FACEBOOK FOR INDUSTRY NEWS, DEADLINES AND OTHER UPDATES Max Heath