In late September, a man walked into the office of Jill Friesz, the owner of a newspaper publishing company in North Dakota, in a rage. “He was telling me he was tired of my excuses and that he may as well just quit subscribing to the paper,” said Friesz, whose company, GS Publishing, operates seven weekly newspapers across the southwestern part of the state.
Friesz was surprised by all the “swearing and hollering,” but not the emotion: like many subscribers, the visitor was upset because his paper never seemed to show up on time. “I have so many frustrated people that call and just say, ‘Well, there’s no point in me getting the newspaper because it never gets delivered to me,’” Friesz said.
The problem, according to Friesz and a half dozen other newspaper publishers, editors, and trade association members who spoke to CJR, is significant delays by the US Postal Service, leading to weekly papers arriving at the homes of subscribers as late as nine weeks. Weekly papers have struggled with postal delays for years, but publishers say that recently it has gotten notably worse. In 2014, periodicals were scheduled to be delivered within three days, according to a GAO report, which found that up to a quarter of them were delivered late. This delivery range for periodicals was later increased to up to nine days, and in 2021, a new cost-cutting initiative called “Delivering for America” resulted in the closure of distribution centers across the country, exacerbating the problem.
