Great Falls Gazette Parts Ways with U.S. Postal Service

Aerial view of a man sorting an envelope

In 2024, the Gazette was proud to get started with home delivery, bringing back morning papers and attempting to keep as much control over our distribution. We made it the whole year, however we had some staffing issues that made it nearly impossible to continue offering home delivery. The Gazette, like countless other newspapers turned to the US Postal Service to help get the news out.

That decision to back track and give a government agency the ability to exert control over our paper, was probably one of the worst choices I’ve made with the paper. They dictate advertising content, require disclosure of confidential information (including names, addresses and purchases made by our readers). They promised security and stability, but we found both lacking, and where they would be far less expensive, was really just a pipe dream.

Due to some pending legal actions, I can’t go into all the details, however suffice it to say, by parting ways with the postal service and it’s ‘Periodical’ service, we can once again run the paper the way we want to run it, and not be dictated to. We don’t have to fear that content could get us in trouble or that we had to disclose information with which we were not happy about sharing. Most importantly our adjusted cost for delivering a paper is less than half what we paid for postal when taking into account lost or damaged mail, price increases/fluctuations, and other costs of using the postal service.

What this will mean is that most people on mail service will be transitioned from postal to home delivery. We will not longer accept new clients using postal delivery, and with a few exceptions, most existing clients on Mail delivery will not be able to renew without moving to a different system. For some, our digital paper will be a good fit. Portable, and the same as the printed paper, it’s an easy way to get the paper with no delivery. We will be offering to sell single issues that can be mailed or shipped, however subscriptions for three papers a week would be much to expensive. And of course our large network of news stands and single sale locations means that even without a subscription, readers can enjoy the paper on their terms.

You may have noticed, our subscription form has become much more succinct. Pricing has become easier, and more clear. And most importantly the rapid increases in postage don’t affect the paper as much. With our home delivery, we have reset our costs back to less than postage was in 2023. We have better control, and more importantly we keep that money in our community.

A few other changes, Classified ads in Foxy’s Market will be going up a little bit, and be more inline with market rates. Base rate will be $7.50 for the first 30 words, and 15 cents per word extra. Pictures for print edition of the paper will be $2.50 per 2×2″ picture. These ads will still be good for 1 week.

We are very sad that the postal service appears to be moving towards it own obsolescence, however we are positioning our selves to be ready to weather that storm.

Andy Anderson
Author: Andy Anderson

Andy is publisher of Foxys Publishing Co, as well as pressman, ad sales, distribution and sometime janitor. He occasionally makes a wild attempt at writing but quite often is seen running around our offices trying to "Get 39 million things done today..."

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About Andy Anderson

Andy is publisher of Foxys Publishing Co, as well as pressman, ad sales, distribution and sometime janitor. He occasionally makes a wild attempt at writing but quite often is seen running around our offices trying to "Get 39 million things done today..."

View all posts by Andy Anderson

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