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 Isn’t it odd how sometimes, after starting out to accomplish something for one reason, you actually end up benefitting in an altogether different way?
This thought occurred to me the other day while pondering why the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t seem as interested (or able) as it once was in delivering our newspapers even though we’re one of its best customers.
At the time, I’d been straining my brain, trying to figure out if there was anything we could do to get the job done better ourselves rather than waiting for the USPS to step up.
And, although nothing much worth repeating came to mind, I have to admit that there’s been at least one thing that we’ve done here in Fredericksburg that seems to have helped:
Home delivery. It all began back in 1978 while trying to come up with something that would give us a circulation edge over the old Radio Post.
We’d heard that the Uvalde Leader-News did home delivery and so then-publisher Art Kowert and I drove down there for a better look. And, to make a very long story a little shorter, we decided after about 10 minutes of R&D that we’d take a leap of faith and just do it.
Without going into a lot of boring details, we started out with two carriers throwing about 450 papers onto the front lawns of our in-town subscribers at no extra charge.
At first, we treated these two fellows as contract laborers but then discovered that, because we were telling them what to do as well as where and when they had to do it, we needed to make them part-time employees in order to comply with labor laws.
At the same time, rather than relying on children tossing papers from bicycles, we resorted to hiring adults. Since our paper comes back from the press around 1 p.m. each Wednesday, these folks could begin delivering papers, using their own vehicles, much earlier in the afternoon than kids who would have to wait until school let out for the day before getting started.
Besides, cars have a much larger payload than bicycles and can also get the job done a lot faster than pedal-power.
Of course, because cars use considerably more fuel than bicycles and because fuel costs money, we needed to pay carriers the IRS mileage rate in addition to compensating them for time on the job, which over the years has amounted to about two hours per carrier every Wednesday afternoon.
In time, we were able to build up our in-town home delivery count to the point that today we use five carriers to deliver around 2,000 papers onto front lawns and at apartment complex doors.
But I get ahead of myself.
One of the steps we take to hurry up the delivery process each Wednesday afternoon is that, instead of having carriers prep their own papers for delivery, we do it in-house.
With the exception of two or three folks who stay “up front” to man the phones and handle walk-in customers, just about everybody else in the building heads to the backshop the minute the last section arrives from the press.
Years ago, once the assembled paper had come off our inserting machine, we used rubber bands to roll papers before loading them into carriers’ vehicles.
But unpredictable Texas weather eventually has prompted a shift to plastic bags because they do a better job of keeping papers both dry and relatively free of damage when they skid across someone’s driveway or wind up in a water sprinkler shower.
Of course, it sometimes happens that the neighbor’s dog decides to play fetch with your paper or the carrier sails one into a bird bath or rose bush. When such a calamity or a miss occurs, we respond to calls from frustrated readers by having one of us — often the editor or publisher — hand-deliver a replacement right away that afternoon to the offended front door to impress upon subscribers that each one of them is very important to us.
Speaking of servant-leadership, whenever a carrier is either ill or on vacation, we in the newsroom often team up to get the job done. Doing double-duty in this way is both educating and humbling to us keyboard jockeys because, as we drive through neighborhoods and see subscribers either waiting on their front porches or combing through shrubs for a lost paper, we can’t help but be reminded just why it is that we’re in this business in the first place.
Not being much of an accountant, I’m not sure just how well we come out financially with home delivery when comparing costs with the revenue received from happy subscribers.
On the other hand, I do know that both our retailers and readers are much happier that we deliver the news and advertisements onto front lawns on the afternoon the paper is published rather than having the job done the next day — and probably many missed sales later — by a slower mail service.
Admittedly, home delivery is not the be-all end-all to every circulation goal because, for example, we have yet to figure out just how to make it cost-effective for rural subscribers.
Still, I think it beats wringing your hands while worrying over what the postal service might do someday to DDU service or how a predicted five-day mail delivery schedule will impact circulation numbers.
I did, however, think of one alternative to handling this stress. Just walk across the room, stick your head out of the window and yell out as loud as you can: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it any more!”
That just might do it.
But you might also want to think about giving home delivery a try.
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Messenger Staff
Publisher
Micheal Hodges
Editor
Laura King
For questions or corrections please call the editor at 512-477-6755 or email lking@texaspress.com.
Subscription rate $6 per year
Single issue 50 cents
© Texas Press Messenger, 2011 (ISSN 1521-7523). Published monthly by Texas Press Service, a business affiliate of Texas Press Association. Periodicals postage paid at Austin, Texas, and additional mailing office, USPS 541-440. Printed by Hood County News in Granbury, Texas.
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