Lack of Saturday mail will hurt country dwellers, small-town newspapers

[caption id="attachment_11002" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Concordia Sentinel in Ferriday, La"][/caption]

NATCHITOCHES, LOUISIANA - Carol Forsloff - While urban folk might not be
negatively impacted if the postal service terminates Saturday delivery,  those who live in rural areas like Natchitoches, Louisiana or La Grande, Oregon are going to be hurt, experts say.


 Al Cross of the University of Kentucky's Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues has asked
the Postal Regulatory Commission last week because of the problems it will cause for rural residents.

“Reducing the quality of postal service will reduce the quality of life in rural America, making it a less attractive place to live," Cross told the
Commission.  He did this in writing on behalf of the National Newspaper Association.

"The resulting out-migration, and suppression of in-migration, will contribute to population loss and stagnation in rural counties and add
to suburban sprawl that drains other public resources.”

The U.S. Postal Service has seen a decline in regular mail and has lost money.  The organization says it can save about $3 billion a year if it
ends Saturday mail deliveries.

But Congress has to enact legislation for the Post Office to make this kind of move.

Cross contention is how important newspapers are to rural areas where Internet access may not be readily available, especially of the
broadband type.

"The community newspaper is a much more important part of the civic infrastructure in a rural community, because there's just less civic
infrastructure there," Cross said in an interview. "It's been said that when a community loses its newspaper, it loses its beating heart or its
lungs."

Rural newspapers often use the regular mail to deliver newspapers in the country areas because it can be too difficult for delivery trucks to
reach some of these  places.

Cross said the Postal Service could also reduce costs by restructuring its pension, for example.

"They did a survey and found that people said they were more willing to have no Saturday mail than a significant postal cost increase. You give
people a choice like that, it's not surprising they would choose the cheaper alternative," Cross said. "That ignores the fact that you have a
lot of people that depend on Saturday delivery, and their interests should be respected. You shouldn't have a tyranny of the majority."

Small communities with daily papers or weeklies that publish on Saturdays will be especially affected because high school sports are very
important in rural areas, where the local residents want to see what happened with the last game.

"People might dismiss the importance of high school football games, but in a lot of towns they are really important community convenings," said
Cross. "People identify with the local football team, or in some cases basketball team. Friday nights are really important. It's important for
the newspaper to be able to stay current with such major activity."

Even papers that publish on Friday would be hurt, Cross said, because the subscribers in the country areas wouldn't get their newspaper until
Monday.

In an area like Natchitoches, Louisiana, for example, in the outlying areas people get the Natchitoches Times by mail and waiting until Monday for
the paper might mean they would miss out on events or issues they find important.

 "A significant percentage of weeklies' circulation goes to expatriates, people who used to live there or have family there, have property there,
maybe even still vote there," he said. "The Postal Service has gotten increasingly bad about timely delivery of these newspapers in the last 10 years."