NNA fights back against two postage increases a year, and has some other comments for the PRC

Jul 11, 2025

The Postal Service should only be permitted to raise postage rates annually, the National Newspaper Association told the Postal Regulatory Commission.

NNA is responding to a request by the PRC for comments on proposed new rules that would stop the semi-annual increases that publishers have seen most years since 2021.

Matthew Paxton IV, NNA’s senior delegate to the USPS Mailers Technical Advisory Committee, commented in a letter to the PRC that some NNA members had previously thought dividing USPS’s hefty price increases into two segments might help publishers to absorb the new costs. But, he said: “We have concluded that the disruptive effects of semi-annual increases outweigh whatever flexibility it provides our smaller members in absorbing the increases.”

He cited the costs of software updates, USPS’s own inability to keep its internal software in sync with new rates and the disruptive effects of higher prices in general as factors that lead NNA to support the PRC’s proposal to limit the increases to once a year. But, he warned, unless the scale of recent increases is tempered by PRC regulation, the impact upon newspapers will continue to be harmful.

Periodicals mail volume, which includes newspapers, has fallen by almost a third since the steep increases began in 2021. Slow delivery, combined with the higher rates, has pushed customers away from the postal system.

Paxton, publisher of The News-Gazette in Lexington, Virginia, was joined in his comments by NNA’s full postal delegation to the Postmaster General’s Mailers Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC): former NNA Chair John Galer, publisher of The Journal-News in Hillsboro (Illinois); Bradley Hill, CEO of Interlink, Berrien Springs, Michigan, a postal software supplier; and Lynne Lance, NNA Executive Director.

The group also reminded the Commission that it has not required USPS to measure the true cost of Within County newspaper delivery since 2007. While the Commission imposes a 2%surcharge each year on Periodicals newspapers for failing to cover USPS costs for their handling and delivery, neither USPS nor the Commission has tried to nail down the actual costs to USPS for delivering Within County newspapers. 

The Commission is pushing USPS to do a better job of giving discounts for mailers’ extra work that actually matches the costs USPS is able to avoid when mailers do private hauling, extra presorting, better address management and the like. But, Paxton argues, it is impossible to match publishers’ contributions to saving USPS money if no one knows what the true postal costs are.

“We are really in a watershed moment,” Paxton said. “USPS is in deep financial trouble. The high rates and tone-deaf indifference to customer needs for the past few years have sent this system into a tailspin. The PRC seems to be trying to find some levers to help pull the ship back on course. NNA has been doing its part to help avoid disaster.

“We have told the Commission that we are here to help it understand better ways to get newspapers into subscribers’ hands. Our MTAC delegation goes to Washington four times a year to do just that. We hope we are able to work together with postal management and the regulators to avoid even more serious problems in the months ahead.”