So somebody at Fox changes some web sites. Yeah - it's important. Time Warner using the USPS to cut their costs while driving costs up for small mags like the Nation.... much bigger deal.
Just ran across this at TPM and thought it was important to call attention to. It seems that Time Warner is trying to cut it's cost and drive up all the small players costs at the same time. Ah, I love the smell of megacorporate power in the morning...
The short and sweet of it is that Time Warner has proposed and postal regulators have accepted a proposal which is actually reducing postage costs for mega-mags like Time and Newsweek while dramatically raising them for small independent publishers.
Continued below the fold
Continued snip from above
From small mags on the right and left I've been deluged in recent weeks by letters saying the new rates are tipping them into financial crisis.
Here for instance is a passage from a blast email I got this morning from the Nation's David Corn ...
Teresa Stack, The Nation's president, explains the crisis this way: Postal regulators have accepted a scheme designed in part by lobbyists for the Time-Warner media conglomerate. In short, mailing costs for mega-magazines like Time-Warner's own Time, People and Sports Illustrated will go up less than other magazines or even decrease. But smaller publications like The Nation will be hit by an enormous rate increase of half a million dollars a year.
Here is a link to a site that will give more details and action opportunities.
Please take a look and spend some energy to help avoid this
Our nation's founders understood the First Amendment would be worth little without a postal system that encouraged broad public participation in America's "marketplace of ideas."
Thomas Jefferson supported this with calls for a postal service that allowed citizens to gain "full information of their affairs," where ideas could "penetrate the whole mass of the people." Along with James Madison, he paved the way for a service that gave smaller political journals a voice. Their solution included low-cost mailing incentives whereby publications could reach as many readers as possible.
Other founders soon came to understand that the press as a political institution needed to be supported through favorable postal rates. President George Washington spoke out for free postage for newspapers through the mail, and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton -- no proponent of government deficit -- conceded that incentives were necessary to spawn a viable press.
The postal policies that resulted have lasted for more than 200 years, spurring a vibrant political culture in the United States. They have eased the entry of diverse political viewpoints into a national discourse often dominated by the largest media organizations.
Our free press did not happen magically; it was built on the foundation of postal policies that encouraged small publications and dissident ideas to spout and flourish. The postal system is based on policies of public service and democratic values.
Time Warner Rewrites History
All of this could change in 2007.
Please see here for more and ways to help combat TW's powerplay.
Here are some excerpts from Ms. Stack's letter to the BOG, found on the Nation's web site:
http://www.thenation.com/...
As the publishers of small magazines that focus primarily on politics and culture, we share a common mission of providing the information necessary to a flourishing democracy, whether from the left, right, center, religious or secular point of view. We struggle, many of us on a weekly basis, to inform the national dialogue in a way the founders believed absolutely essential to the health of this country. As journals of opinion and ideas, we do not do it for the money--there are far more lucrative businesses--we do it because, like the country's founders, we believe it to be a public good (unlike the mass circulation glossies, which are the primary supporters and beneficiaries of the new rate design).
As you know, the United States Postal Service (USPS) had proposed a rate increase for periodicals of about 11.7 percent in May of 2006, an increase which would have affected all periodicals more or less equally. While this would have been a very large increase, small magazines were budgeting for and preparing for its implementation in 2007.
Instead, in its February, 2007 decision, the PRC recommended a version of the Time Warner (the largest publisher in the industry) rate proposal that had previously been explicitly rejected by the Postal Rate Commission and strongly opposed by the USPS, and that had a disproportionately adverse effect on small national publications, while easing the postal burden on the largest magazines. The PRC ignored its own precedent and instead accepted a proposal from a segment of the industry that not only fundamentally changes the historic ethos of our postal system, but does so in a breathtakingly short period of time.
While in theory interested parties could participate in the rate case between the USPS recommendation and the PRC decision, and those (unlike us) with very substantial resources did, it was impossible for us to judge how the Time Warner plan would affect individual small titles, and frankly, most of us did not think an industry-generated plan that had previously been rejected would be chosen over the USPS proposal. After the dramatic and unexpected PRC decision, there was an industry "comment period" of only eight working days. This was an impossible amount of time for small magazines to digest changes so complex that to this day there is no definitive computer model to fully assess the actual new charges.
<snip some stats from McGraw Hill outlining impact to several publications>
These increased rates will also raise the barriers-to-entry for prospective new publishers to such an extent that they will all but kill off the launching of any new periodicals, unless associated with the largest conglomerates, for the foreseeable future. This is a measure therefore that destroys competition in the periodical market and locks in the privileged positions of the largest firms. While it is understandable that Time Warner would relish the idea of making it much more difficult for new competitors to enter publishing, there is no reason to think that it is in the interest of the American people or the market economy.
<snip>
Even if the argument can be made that a cost-based system trumps all other interests, the USPS remains in effect a government monopoly. Small publishers were totally blindsided by this decision. We are, for the most part, small businesses - to raise costs so dramatically without our input and with no recourse is devastating. No trade organization or high-priced consultants and lawyers defended our interests. Comments on how these changes would affect small titles were heard only from companies that could afford to provide them, via expert testimony and top-notch legal advice. No one from the PRC even analyzed the effects these new rates would have on the thousands of magazines like us, at least as far as we can tell. No one considered how a small business would accommodate a 30% increase in one of the most expensive, if not the most expensive, items in its budget. This rate case process was unorthodox and unaccountable to the very industries most affected.
Instead of the preference periodicals were entitled to throughout this country's history, the PRC has adopted the most burdensome requirements for magazine mailers, with the most complex rate structure of any class of mail and surcharges for containers not found anywhere else in the postal system. What is the justification for changing a historically preferred mail class into the most bureaucratically burdened and cost-based of all mail classes in the span of a single rate case? Periodical rates ought to be the least cost-based, because it is a class that exists for content. It appears as if the PRC and the BOG have in fact completely dismissed the ideals that the country's founders articulated when they instituted the national mailing system, ideals that have been eloquently defended in every past rate case.
<snip>
We would ask that:
- The Board of Governors moves quickly to delay the implementation of these new rates, allowing an additional period of public comment and
- A full assessment and justification of the new rates and their impact on the public good is completed. And if the new rates cannot be adequately assessed and justified at this time, that the decision of the BOG is revised and the new rates revoked.
- Whether it exercises its right to file another case under the old reform law, or whether it moves right to the new law's provisions, the Postal Service shifts some of the added burden from the smaller circulation publications that manage to survive until then.
I encourage you to spread the word and assist efforts to oppose this dramatic change in postal regulations.