Post Office to Favor Big Mags, Spike Rates for Small Pubs

[nosmokes]

so much for competition. and just like everything else that's done in this admin, it's big bidness writing the rules. funny how the people that scream free market the loudest practice it the least.
--###--

original-newstandardnews


Post Office to Favor Big Mags, Spike Rates for Small Pubs
by Megan Tady

Apr. 25 – Small periodicals across the country will see their mailing costs swell thanks to new postage rates written by a major media conglomerate and adopted by the US Postal Service.

The rate-increase plan, approved by the USPS in March, will go into effect on July 15. The increase was recommended by the Postal Regulatory Committee, an agency independent of the Post Office, and is a modified version of a rate structure proposed to the Committee by the media giant TimeWarner.

The Postal Service had asked the PRC for recommended rate increases for all mail in May 2006 in order to raise an additional $4 billion in annual revenues.TimeWarner submitted its proposed rate structure to the PRC during public hearings.

Several publications with relatively small circulations, including progressive magazines The Nation and Mother Jones, are protesting the increase, saying that while the new rates favor larger-circulation periodicals.

Despite the outcry, there is currently no reliable data showing how exactly the mailing costs of different types of periodicals will change. The rate change is so complicated, the USPS says new computer software will need to be written in order to calculate mailing rates.

Nevertheless, critics of the rate changes are predicting a "crippling hike" that, in the words of the media-reform organization Free Press, "could push many smaller magazines into bankruptcy and make it almost impossible to launch a new independent publication."
~snip~
.
.
.
complete article here

[Captain Hilts]

1. Huge distributors of junk mail also have seen their rates go down. nt

[ruiner4u]

2. IIRC, postage for library's mailing books to each other will also increase n/t

[Captain Hilts]

3. Sending a book as media mail last week would have cost me $16, AND

that would have gotten it to Toronto in "four to six weeks."

Sending it regular first class, nine dollars.

This is the OPPOSITE of what it used to cost to mail books. Books had a lower rate to ensure it wasn't prohibitively expensive to mail them, i.e. censorship.

[kurth]

4. Typical GOP-run government agency

Why Republicans should be banned from government service.