postalnews blog

I have to admit I missed it, but a week ago Tuesday was sort of the eighth birthday for what later became postalnews.com. It was on April 18, 1998, that I posted the following notice in the alt.snail-mail newsgroup on USENET:

From: postalnews
Date: Sat, Apr 18 1998 12:00 am
Email: postaln…@altavista.net
Groups: alt.snail-mail
For the latest postal news, check out Postal News Online at: http://members.xoom.com/postalnews/index.htm

It’s updated daily, and provides links to news stories about the US Postal Service, its employees, customers and competitors.
—–== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==—– http://www.dejanews.com/

(For those of you who may not have been surfing the web back then, USENET was a network of discussion groups that was probably the liveliest, most interactive service on the Internet prior to the World Wide Web.)

Postal News Online started on the old Xoom.com service, one of the early do-it-yourself web site hosting companies. By September of 1998, Postal News Online was attracting a regular daily readership, and I registered the domain name postalnews.com, and moved the site to a regular, commercial web hosting service.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of the original Xoom site, but you can see an early version of postalnews.com, from January 1999, at web.archive.org. (Note: for some reason the Postal Service blocks archive.org on its internal network, so you won’t be able to see the archive if you’re on a postal computer.)

Google Groups : alt.snail-mail

I enjoy Azeez Jaffer’s responses to anti-postal newspaper columns, editorials, etc., as much as anyone, but I sometimes wonder if he’s missing the Postal Service’s real PR problem. Sending off another clever letter to the editor complaining about the use of the phrase “going postal” may be satisfying, but in the long run, what difference does it really make?

Meanwhile, we seem to be either shooting ourselves in the foot when we deal with postal reform in DC, or burying our head in the sand when it comes to dealing with plant consolidations in the field. Why can KFOX in El Paso say that they’ve waited months for someone from the El Paso Post Office to talk to them? Why can Senator Harkin complain that we won’t tell him what our plans are for Sioux City? Why are we letting the mailers, unions, and politicians do all the talking?

Why are we wasting our time going postal over “going postal” when there are more important things to worry about?

Cliff Atkinson says ditch the bullet points and just tell your story!

LA Times: Making a (Power)Point of Not Being Tiresome

Click here to order Cliff’s book from Amazon

From  Bill Lewis, President, APWU Trenton Metro Area Local

On April 17, 2006 the parties convened to discuss the excessing of Kilmer and Trenton impacted employees.  The manager of labor relations informed me that Trenton was not going to be discussed.  I questioned him as to why was I invited,  he informed me I was invited because I was the NJ state president.  I was shocked because only 3 months ago when Monmouth was excessing I was barred from attending the meeting, reason being, I was too disruptive.  (more…)

Traffic World reports in its April 24 issue that “more third-party firms in the package market tied to the U.S. Postal Service are folding their tents, hit hard by trends that drove the giant parcel consolidator APX Logistics out of business.”

According to the article, DDU Express has already folded, its telephones disconnected, while Parcel Corporation of America was “telling people it was also preparing to close, and sources there said the immediate cause was the APX bankruptcy”.

Like we said, we figured this mail-a-brick thing was a sure fire revenue enhancer- maybe it works both ways? (But then again, if Congresspersons really replied in kind, their bricks would be franked- we’d never see the money…)

We Don’t Think the Immigration Bill Failed For Lack of “Bricks,” but If It Keeps You Off the Streets… - Wonkette

Don’t think the postal service is affected by globalization? Think again…

Folio Magazine - The Global Paper Game

Postcom points out that a group pushing the idea of a Berlin-style wall along the US-Mexico border is asking people to send bricks to their Congressmen.

Could be a revenue windfall! After all, you have to figure that the bricks are never going to get any further than the site where they do the anthrax screening for mail addressed to federal agencies. It’s not like we’d actually have to deliver them to the actual members of Congress.

Best quote from the web site:

“It is very important that you include a message on the brick and a signed letter so that the brick is not just discarded.”

(Clever- I know when I get a brick in the mail I always look to see if there’s a signed letter with it before I decide what to do with it.)

Send a Brick- Secure our Borders

I work in finance, so I usually read the Wall Street Journal every day. I don’t read the whole thing mind you, and one section I avoid like the plague is the editorial page. The Journal Editorial Board is located on the political spectrum just slightly to the left of Augusto Pinochet. And when I say slightly I mean you’d need a micrometer to measure the difference.

So I missed the Board’s little hissy fit blaming the Postal Service for Hurricane Katrina. Okay, maybe they didn’t actually blame the hurricane on us, but they might as well have. To hear the Journal tell it, the USPS has been sitting at home watching TV since the storm hit, and just started delivering mail again last week. Meanwhile, the Board would have you believe that UPS and FedEx have been tirelessly rebuilding the levees and resurrecting the dead.

And just to make sure they got your attention, our friends at the Journal headlined their little tirade ‘Going Postal’. Pretty funny, eh!

Let’s be charitable though- it must be difficult finding stuff to write about these days for the Journal folks. They had it easy back in the Clinton years. Sure, the economy was humming, there was a budget surplus, we weren’t invading countries, torturing prisoners or rolling back civil liberties, but there was Monica! Now, with the economy in a shambles, and Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished’ war going into its fourth year with no sign of an end, it’s kind of tough to find someone to rant against- the people screwing things up are the people you and your cronies bought and paid for. So why not pick on the Postal Service until you can come up with something better?

One thing I can’t figure out though- if the private sector would have been so much better at resuming mail service to New Orleans, why didn’t the Wall Street Journal lead the way by contracting with UPS or FedEx to take over the delivery of its mail subscriptions in the city?

Let’s see- could it be that even those selfless miracle workers might have wanted more than the 15 or so cents the Journal pays us? Or was it just that they couldn’t possibly have even attempted such a thing?

Probably both.

The value of hard copy, delivered by mail:

“It’s an interesting question.  And a strategic one.  If I’m publishing a fee-based newsletter, is it better to email or print and snail mail it to my audience?  According to Christopher Knight at Email Universe.com, it’s better to print it…if you want your reader to value it most.”

Jim Logan - Should You Print Or Email Your Fee-Based Newsletter?