Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper

From the Editor

Delivering on Saturday

On Saturday three of us from this office took a side trip to view Lincoln’s stab at assembling the tallest structure ever built from Lincoln Logs.

Yeah, we live exciting lives.

A team had reconstructed Nebraska’s state capitol with the famed children’s toy, creating a soaring tower some 12 feet high. More than a simple effort to set a Guinness record, the project was billed—in an otherwise tedious address by Lincoln’s mayor—as part of a campaign to emphasize the youthful vigor of the city.

Later that evening, we sat with Merle Baranczk, President of the National Newspaper Association. A feisty, old-school journalist, he had just returned from a lengthy stay in Washington, D.C., helping preserve Saturday mail delivery.

As you know, the U.S. Postal Service announced in February their plans to end house to house mail service on Saturdays, cutting back to a five-day schedule, apart from parcels. This move, USPS insisted, would save the debt-ridden operation $2 billion a year—critical for a service that lost close to $16 billion in 2012. After all, no taxpayer dollars go to support its operating costs.

The advent of email, text messaging and other devices first adopted by young people cut deeply into the venerable postal service’s revenue. To make matters worse, census figures suggest that many talented graduates head to the growing urban areas to live and work. After the last accounting we learned that rural America accounted for a mere 16 percent of overall population.

Toting mail to a dwindling population? Well, it seems like a drain—something out of Mayberry RFD and the Barney Fife days.

In fact, some urban analysts believe unions associated with the postal workers banded together to preserve “well paying” government jobs. The Los Angeles Times even claimed “Before the advent of email, eliminating one day’s mail delivery would have imposed a significant hardship on American households. That wouldn’t be the case today, when Americans can communicate on their telephones as well as their computers.”

True—however, small town businesses in this country cannot reach the majority of consumers in there regions on weekends with sales or specials unless they rapidly update websites…and count on hardworking families to search them out.

The advertising flyer stuffed into newspapers or delivered directly to homes has long been a source of name recognition and potential revenue to small businesses in rural communities. Slashing Saturday delivery from the postal schedule would have a direct impact on local retail shops, grocery stores, restaurants and such.

I wouldn’t really expect New Yorkers of Los Angelenos to understand. We live, after all, in one of the “flyover” states.

Simply put, while the USPS is not fully funded by taxpayer dollars, they are a government agency. And the federal government should not work against rural businesses.

Yeah, the service cannot continue running at a $16 billion annual loss. They may still win congressional approval to can Saturday delivery. The larger cities shrug at the issue and, the numbers say, they are winning the war for the next generation’s labor.

But small towns are like the feisty head of the NNA: tough, relentless and here for the duration. And a people able to conceive of and construct something as pointless (and painstaking) as a 12-foot Lincoln Log tower could direct their mental capacity toward a real solution to the USPS debt-Saturday delivery conundrum.

Then again, who am I to say? I spent part of my Saturday gaping at a stack of wood.

Dave Faries can be contacted at [email protected].

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 
Rendered 03/12/2024 00:36