Phones at the Cook County News-Herald have been ringing off the hook this week as readers from all ends of the county have been calling asking why they haven’t received the latest issue. We’ve had frustrated subscribers stopping by the office, asking what has happened to the Saturday delivery of the paper. While we are delighted that readers are eager to get the paper, we are frustrated at our inability to do much about it. There might be good news though.
For years, folks who live out of Cook County or out-of-state have dealt with slow delivery. Newspapers have never been handled nicely by the postal service. I’ve frequently heard from friends and family far away that their papers take weeks to get to them. I saw it myself when I visited some relatives in Illinois—three weeks of News-Heralds arrived on the same day.
How did that happen? Where was the log jam in the system? We’ve struggled with this for years, advocating for these far away readers, asking that the newspapers be traced from our end and their end. Sometimes a complaint from the reader to his or her local post office gets the delivery problem solved.
Fortunately most of our far-flung subscribers don’t mind the wait for the paper. They are people who have lived here in the past who just want to stay in touch with the Arrowhead. They are people considering a move north or who love to vacation here, who just want the flavor of the county. They don’t necessarily need to know that the county is holding a special meeting or what bands are playing at Papa Charlie’s over the weekend.
County residents though rely on the News-Herald for those upcoming meetings and events. For years county residents on mail routes— while not necessarily happy about it—have been resigned to the fact that they don’t get their News-Heralds until Saturday. There is no way to rectify that, as we don’t receive the newspapers in the county until after the mail carriers have left the Grand Marais Post Office.
However, our April 25 issue did not arrive on Saturday. Most outlying county subscribers didn’t get their paper until Monday, some not until Tuesday. And that is not acceptable for our readers, as we’ve heard loudly and clearly.
The News-Herald has been waiting to see what happens with the proposed closure of the Duluth Post Office. News-Herald staffers, like many Northlanders have been hoping that the U.S. Postal Service will realize that this center is critical to not just Grand Marais, but all the outlying rural areas whose mail is sorted there. We’ve breathed sighs of relief several times as the closure was postponed in 2011 and again in 2013. We’ve hoped the closure would be halted entirely.
Last week though, it appeared that the closure process is beginning and we were disappointed to see how it negatively impacted our readers. We had one irate reader declare that we should go back to the Pony Express as it might be faster.
All along we’ve been lobbying Congressman Rick Nolan and Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar to see if they can do anything. They’ve done a good job fighting to keep the Duluth Post Office open.
I felt a bit hopeless though when I realized how out-of-touch the federal agency actually is. I was disappointed when a postal service spokesperson issued a statement assuring the approximately 70 employees at the Duluth facility that jobs would be found for all of them within a 50-mile radius. Apparently the Postal Service does not realize the distance between Duluth and other facilities.
We’ve also been asking our local postal representatives what can be done to help get the News-Herald to our North Shore readers. Surely the papers don’t have to take the scenic route to St. Paul to be sorted and then sent back? After the outcry over overdue papers this week, we think we have found a way to speed things up. Following the post office’s advice and changing the way things are sorted and delivered to the post office in Grand Marais, we think we’ll be back on track.
If not, I know we’ll hear from you. Thanks for reading!
What the public
announcements do not
say is that when America’s
mail sneezes, rural mail gets
pneumonia.
John Edgecombe Jr.
Leave a Reply