Forum Editorial: Seeking a timely mail solution

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When you hear the words “first class” what comes to mind. It should be phrases such as top of the line, better than other options, the absolute best. Unfortunately for those in the newspaper industry those descriptions do not fit what we know of as First Class.

Nearly every paper in the United States has gone to delivering the local news by mail through the U.S. Postal Service. And for years that delivery system was far more efficient at a relatively reasonable cost for local publishers.

However, that efficiency and affordability continues to evaporate and we’re not sure how it’s going to change — and it may only get worse before it gets better.

Each week, we get calls here at the Maryville Forum and the Grant City Times-Tribune about papers not being delivered in a timely fashion. Most of those calls are from outside of our county area. But if you are getting your paper outside of Nodaway and Worth counties, the wait for your paper on a regional level is like playing a round of roulette — if you even get it at all.

One of our subscribers who lives just outside of Nodaway County stopped by the office this week to let us know that once again he did not get his newspaper. This is not the first time, and has become a very disturbing trend of him coming in every week to pick up a paper as it is not even showing up late part of the time — it just doesn’t show up. The subscriber said that when his subscription expires, he will not renew, but will just come by every week to pick up a paper.

So much for “first class.”

Our local post offices do the best they possibly can. The fact is, our post offices are expected to do more than they ever have before –— the primary method of delivery for not only local newspapers like ours, but for online national retailers like Amazon that choke the pipeline with packages that crisscross the nation.

The problem doesn’t start with local post offices, whose postmasters often work with us to try and find solutions.

Here is how The Forum’s process works: The paper gets printed on Wednesday night, we go pick it up from our print partner, and then deliver them to the Maryville post office that night and Grant City early Thursday morning for distribution later that day. If it’s not a Nodaway or Worth County address, the paper generally goes to Kansas City to be processed and sent to the right post office.

And usually, that’s where the problems really begin.

According to audit reports released in 2023 and 2024 by the Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General, staffing availability continues to be the primary reason for mail delays connected to the Kansas City processing center, which has ripple effects all across our region. Getting the mail from one place to another — before it gets “in the mail” — relies on an interconnected network of USPS deliverers through both ground and air, and third-party carriers, too. Staffing issues on that end, the 2023 report noted and USPS staff themselves have cited to local media more recently, have also contributed to the problems.

Everyone loves to complain about the mail. But we think the problem has gone beyond complaint. What is anyone going to do about it?

So far, the 10-year “Delivering for America” plan unveiled in 2021 by former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has been a colossal failure. But there is no better plan on the horizon, either.

No one has yet replaced DeJoy as the nation’s chief postmaster since he resigned effective March 24, and only six spots on the 11-seat Postal Service Board of Governors are filled. In his resignation letter, DeJoy touted cutting about 30,000 jobs at the Postal Service in 2021 alone and reducing work hours by about 50 million since he was appointed. In cooperation with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Postal Service plans to cut another 10,000 jobs by the end of April and slash funding by more than $3.5 billion annually.

Does that sound like we’re going to be getting our mail faster?

The fact is, there is nothing stopping a private business like Amazon — or The Forum, for that matter — from building its own delivery network if it believes it will be more reliable. But we don’t, because the Postal Service has, time and again, proven to be the most efficient and cost-effective method to ship items and mail anywhere across the country. So far, zero private companies have even come close to trying to match the Herculean public service built of American ingenuity that created the Postal Service in the first place — and for good reason.

But administration after administration has done nothing to restore the service Americans expect and deserve from the finest postal system in the world, one that every American — from individuals mailing greeting cards, to businesses mailing bills, to your local newspaper mailed to your home mailbox — has the right to use with confidence and pride.

We should not be willing to settle for anything less than first class. We’d like to ask our lawmakers why they are happy to complain, but unwilling to actually buckle down and solve the problem.

But we can only presume our letter was lost in the mail.