April 17, 2023 at 10:55 a.m.
'Where's my newspaper?'
Postal problems plague Northwoods
By Trevor Greene-
With a readership spanning the state, as well as other parts of the country, sometimes papers don't make it to subscribers' hands in a timely fashion.
Understandably, this typically happens during the holiday season when the United States Postal Service (USPS) is faced with its biggest workloads.
Over the last few months or so, a delay in our newspaper delivery, however, would sporadically occur more often and not just during the holiday season.
Most recently, staff of The Lakeland Times have noticed an uptick in subscribers calling to notify us they didn't receive their newspaper until two to three days after it's usually delivered. Some customers have told the Times they didn't receive their papers at all.
The Times' general manager Heather Holmes is one staff member who answers many of the calls from those wondering where their papers went. She said she tries to do her best to explain how frustrating this situation is for staff of the newspaper too.
"In the last four months, the postal timing with our newspapers has been very sporadic," she said. "I would say it's horrendous. (I think) our customers would agree it's horrendous. And we're literally receiving hundreds of phone calls every week from local mail to out-of-state mail."
Holmes said it's especially irritating to hear so many customers tell her they're not getting their papers on time when the Times gets the papers to USPS by its postal deadline.
"And we're paying them on time," she said. "We're paying them thousands of dollars every week and we're not getting what we're paying for."
The Times pays USPS every week to deliver its roughly 5,600 copies of Friday's edition and its roughly 4,600 copies of Tuesday's edition.
Tom Tiffany, U.S. representative for Wisconsin's 7th Congressional District, told the Times he feels "it's unconscionable for the postal service to be raising rates, like they're proposing, and not providing commensurate service."
Mitigating delivery delays has been tough, Holmes said, because USPS staff themselves have indicated difficulties in identifying what's exactly causing these issues.
Newspapers are delivered from a printing press in Janesville to Rhinelander. From Rhinelander, papers for Minocqua and Hazelhurst are transported to Minocqua for Tuesday and Friday delivery.
Holmes said the rest of the papers for all other communities are transferred to different USPS mail sorting sites before coming north again.
"All of those newspapers are routed from the postal service from Rhinelander to Green Bay, and then turn around and come back," she said. "And they're supposed to come back and be delivered on Tuesday and Friday ... they're not getting there until two to five days later."
The postmaster in Rhinelander has been working to find solutions, Holmes noted. She said he has told her he's frustrated just like other Lakeland area postal workers.
"They want to get the papers out to people because they're hearing from their customers as well, 'Where's my newspaper?'" Holmes said.
From her perspective, as general manager, Holmes said it seems like most of the postal delays are transpiring in Green Bay's USPS distribution center.
"We can't even get a contact at Green Bay," she said.
Before newspapers started being sorted in Green Bay, the job was done at a similar site in Wausau.
In April of 2021, though, USPS announced the Wausau sorting site would close as part of its 10-year plan "to achieve financial sustainability and service excellence."
As reported by Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR) in June of 2021, the move by USPS completed a process that started in 2015 which shifted the responsibilities and workload from Wausau to Green Bay.
"I don't believe Green Bay can handle it," Michael Tomczyk, American Postal Workers Union president from the Wausau site, said in the 2021 WPR report. "It will cause more delays to our customers."
Apparently, Tomczyk was right in his prediction.
Corey Richter, circulation manager for both the Times and its sister paper the Northwoods River News, said on Tuesday he was in the middle of sending correspondence to Tiffany, saying this is the first time the newspaper has taken such steps.
"Basically, we're getting a federal congressman on top of something because the problem is everything has to go to Green Bay ... to be sorted and sent back," he said. "And basically starting in March, it's just been staying in Green Bay and coming back two, three, four days later to actually get to each post office and get on the carrier routes and get in (people's) mailbox."
With regard to what Tiffany said he's doing to help, he prefaced the situation by explaining the problems have been ongoing for "months now" in the 7th District.
"I contacted leaders down in the Green Bay post office to try and get to the bottom of why this mail can't be processed in a timely fashion," Tiffany said. "It's a big problem at this point. At least the postal service can do is deliver the mail on time and we are working to get to the bottom of it. We have not gotten to the ultimate decision makers, but we will."
Richter said a ballpark estimate of how many calls or emails he receives daily is hard to say, but noted the delay issue is more common with subscribers to The Lakeland Times than The Northwoods River News. This, he said, is likely because the Times has more subscribers than the River News.
Holmes has worked in the newspaper industry for 25 plus years and Richter is going on year 19. Both of them said this is the first time they've seen delivery delays of this magnitude.
"Not quite like this where the sorting facility just sits on it week after week," Richter said. "We've had problems sometimes around the holidays and stuff gets held up ... but this is affecting everything, locally and everywhere."
There seemed to be less problems when the Wausau site was sorting mail, he added.
While attempting to contact area postal workers to comment for previous stories, The Lakeland Times has often been told its USPS policy that local staff cannot speak with members of the media.
One area USPS staff member said she wasn't even willing to provide comment for this story after the Times assured her she would stay anonymous.
In leaked memos from August of 2020, and obtained by tech-media outlet Motherboard, USPS advised its employees not to speak with the media in order to "protect its brand." There were two memos released in both the Appalachian District and the Greater Michigan District, according to the report.
The aim of the memos was to "deliver (an) appropriate and consistent message to the media" and it's "imperative that one person speaks on behalf of the Postal Service."
"Avoid the temptation to 'answer a few questions,' one memo said. "Keep in mind that, while most media representatives will identify themselves up front, sometimes they do not."
Bryan Reeves, a USPS customer relations coordinator the Times was referred to by one area postal worker, said there is a policy that any media communication would need to go through corporate communications; which is headquartered out of Washington D.C.
One area postal worker who was willing to comment said he is aware of the issues subscribers to The Lakeland Times and the newspaper itself have encountered lately.
"To tell you the truth, I can't give you a good reason why (papers) aren't getting to where (they're) supposed to go," he said. "Once it gets here, I'll deliver it. Why it's not getting here is beyond me."
Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].
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