HIGHER MAILING RATES SEEN AS DAMAGING BLOW TO SMALLER NEWSPAPERS

The U.S. Postal Service’s plan to boost mailing rates could add a damaging blow to the nation’s community newspapers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and a drop in advertising revenues, notes Grumpy Editor.

 

Impact of a rate increase for delivering periodicals — up by about 8 percent starting  Aug. 29 — is expected to be felt most by small daily, weekly and rural newspapers after shifting from using independent contractors.

 

To cope with that, publishers could be forced to reduce staff or forgo home deliveries and instead put newspapers in communal news racks — or just shutter their publications, warns Paul Boyle, senior vice president, News Media Alliance, a trade associtaion representing nearly 2,000 U.S. news organizations.

 

 

IN CASE YOUR FAVORITE NEWS OUTLETS MISSED THESE...

 

 

U.S. TROOPS MARK FOURTH YEAR AT BORDER.  Stretching into a fourth year, about 3,800 troops are deployed along the southwest border in support of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. The troops are a mix of active-duty service members and National Guard troops from nearly two dozen states.

 

JUNE SETS TEMPERATURE RECORD.  Last month was the hottest on record in North America, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  NOAA adds the exceptional heat waves that swept the western U.S. helped push June 2021 to the top of the list after 127 years of record keeping. Average June temperature across the contiguous U.S. was more than four degrees above average at 72.6 degrees Fahrenheit. 

 

MASSIVE DIAMOND UNEARTHED.  An enormous 1,174-carat diamond is unearthed in Botswana, the second massive diamond to be found in the country in the space of a few weeks.

HELICOPTER LIFTS TRAPPED HORSE.  Caliifornia’s Orange county firefighters use a helicopter to lift a trapped-on-its-back horse to safety after the spooked equine flees from its rider becomes stuck in concrete debris.

PYTHON ESCAPES FROM MALL ENCLOSURE.  Authorities search for a 12-foot white Burmese python that slithers out of its enclosure inside Louisiana’s largest shopping mall in Baton Rouge.

MEDIA GROUP TO HIRE 250 JOURNALISTS.  Overstory Media Group, a startup media group that operates newsletter-based journalism outlets in British Columbia, says it plans to hire 250 journalists and launch 50 outlets by 2023.

ILLINOIS SCHOOLS TO TEACH ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY.  With hate crimes against Asxian-Americans in the news, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker signs a law that requires public schools to teach a unit of Asian American history, a move education experts say is the first of its kind nationwide.

NINE YEAR OLD GIRL BECOMES PUBLISHER.  A nine-year-old girl in Monroeville, Pa. is publishing a neighborhood newspaper that spotlights uplifting stories and important information to neighbors.