Postal Discount takes effect May 12 for community newspapers
NNA's 10-year effort secures 5% mailing discount for community newspapers
The long-awaited restoration of the Limited Circulation postal discount that newspapers lost in 1985 was announced this week by the Postal Service-the result of NNA's decade-long work on the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The new 5% discount on outside- county mail could help mailers see a reduction in some periodicals rates this year. It applies to in-county mailers with under 5,000 copies outside.
In September 2007, in-county rates were expanded to include pieces on "wandering routes" outside the county, helping most community newspapers, and especially those newspapers near county lines, most some mail from outside-county to in-county.
On May 12, when the first inflation-indexed annual rate increase goes into effect, in-county newspaper mailers will find a new discount on their mailing statements: 5 percent off the piece rates and every pound of editorial copy in a newspaper mailed outside the county. It applies to all charges except pound rate advertising.
Because in-county periodicals rate-the lowest business mail rate in the postal system-is available only to periodicals under 10,000 circulation or whose circulation is more than 50 percent inside the originating county, community newspapers will be the primary beneficiaries of the new rate. It will be extended to both paid circulation and requester publications.
NNA President Steve Haynes, publisher of the Oberlin (KS) Herald, said the restoration of this discount had been a long time coming, but was just in time to cushion the impact of the 2008 rates.
"This discount was built into our businesses in the 19th century, and lost in the 80s as our mail began to emerge from the old system of federal subsidies," Haynes said. "But despite its origins in an earlier era, it did have the benefit of recognizing the unique role of community newspapers in reaching across America with hometown news.
"Congress, in its wisdom, and with the considerable help of Rep. John McHugh, R-NY, who was the original sponsor of postal reform, put a modified version of the discount back in the law. All it took was a half-generation of NNA publishers to help push PAEA into effect, and now we are seeing a concrete result. It is a very welcome sign that the Postal Service will continue to help us reach readers in the 21st century."
NNA Postal Committee Chairman Max Heath, who was present in NNA's first negotiations over PAEA, said he was pleased that the Postal Service had made the new discount simple enough to use and directed its biggest benefit to exactly the right category of mail: news to nearby readers, which comprises most newspapers' outside-county mail.
"The law wasn't terribly specific about how this discount should work," Heath said. "By design, Congress left it to the rate experts to figure it out. Periodicals rates are complicated enough as it is, particularly since the larger magazines insisted upon new depths of complexity last year. But this restoration of Limited Circulation discounts will work just fine for us. It is important for us to note, however, that we do not believe this discount creates a new subsidy, because most of this mail is delivered close to home where USPS sees its greatest efficiencies."
He said his early calculations of the discount's impact indicated that carrier route mail outside the county could see a rate reduction in May.
"This 5% off applies to the piece rate and editorial pound rate," he said. "And the way the new rates will work, the carrier route mail will see the biggest benefit. Bottom line: for our members on county lines or who have a lot of readers nearby outside their county, this little incentive may help us keep their subscription rates down and their copies in the mailstream."
NNA Director of Public Policy Tonda Rush said the Postal Service's announcement in the Federal Register this week had culminated a lengthy discussion with USPS following PAEA's implementation.
"We are in a transitional year in many ways with our mail," she said. "PAEA gave the Postal Service broad outlines, and while providing more discretion in how it handles rate increases, it also handed out new responsibilities. The devil is in the details on how the new law will work, and NNA has been heavily engaged in helping to work out those details for the benefit of community newspapers. We are pleased, finally, to see this old and familiar discount come back to us in a new rate design."
Georgia Court of Appeals backs The Albany Herald in libel case
No malice found in reporter's mistake; error not fixed on Web for seven months
By David Hudson
GPA General Counsel
The Georgia Court of Appeals ruled for The Albany Herald in a case involving a reporter's mistake, and its appearance on the newspaper's Web site for seven months.
In December 2003, The Albany Herald covered a trial involving alleged wrongdoing in the city of Blakely. One city council member was tried and acquitted and a former city clerk pled nolo contendere, and testified in the trial of the city councilman.
Unfortunately, a news article about the trial referred to the former city clerk as a convicted felon when, in fact, he had pled nolo contendere to a misdemeanor. Corrections were later published but the online version of the original article stayed up for seven months.
At the trial-court level, the judge found that the former city clerk was a public official and had to prove actual malice to recover, but held that there were questions of fact to be considered by a jury on whether the newspaper reporter had written the article with actual malice, and whether the newspaper had compounded the mistake by keeping the erroneous article on its Web site for seven months.
In an opinion written by Chief Judge Anne Barnes on March 7, the Court of Appeals agreed that the city clerk was a public official because of the importance of his duties with the city, and also because of the central role he played in the controversy regarding the indictments concerning the misuse of city funds.
On the issue of actual malice, the Court of Appeals agreed with The Albany Herald and reversed the Superior Court judge. All the evidence showed was that the newspaper reporter had made a mistake in transcribing his notes and did not realize at the time he wrote the article that the city clerk had pleaded no contest as opposed to being convicted. He also believed, admittedly erroneously, that the amount of money involved in the plea made it a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
Because actual malice is not established by whether a mistake was made by the reporter, or what a reasonably prudent reporter would have done, but instead by whether the reporter actually "knew [the mistake] when he wrote it," the plaintiff could not prevail. While there was evidence of mistakes made, there was simply no evidence to submit to the jury that the reporter or the newspaper was aware it was "circulating false information or seriously doubted the truth of their statements."
As to the fact that the story remained on the newspaper's Web site for seven months, it was shown that this was a function of the newspaper's advertising department and that there was simply a failure to coordinate between it and the newsroom about changes or corrections that needed to be made. While this might have shown "neglect," it did not demonstrate actual malice.
The Court of Appeals thus reversed the denial of summary judgment for the newspaper.
GPA participated in this case by filing amicus briefs in the Court of Appeals on behalf of The Albany Herald.
... but is Justice Department already softening the bite?
By Tonda Rush
Natiional Newspaper Association
WASHINGTON - The ink was barely dry on the new OPEN Government Act signed into law at the end of 2007 before the U.S. Justice Department signaled its intention to undermine the new law by absorbing a new ombudsman function that was intended for development at the National Archives and Records Administration.
The OPEN Government Act reformed the 41-year-old Freedom of Information Act by, among other things, adding in a mediation/ombudsman function to assist the public in getting federal records. The addition was part of a three-year campaign by the National Newspaper Association and nine other media groups, working through the Sunshine in Government Initiative.
NNA pushed for creation of the Office of Government Information Services because FOIA and its legal mechanisms are often too slow and costly for community newspapers, NNA Government Relations Chairman Liz Parker said. "We specifically endorsed housing it in an agency separate from the Justice Department because that agency acts as the government's lawyer. It can hardly be both an advocate for withholding information and an ombudsman for the public to enforce the law's strong mandate that records are presumed to be public," Parker said. "The National Archives oversees the Federal Records Act, and has a strong history of respecting the integrity of records. The Justice Department, on the other hand, has a different role to play. And this administration's Justice Department is particularly unsuited for the job because it continues to live under a directive of former Attorney General John Ashcroft, directing agencies to withhold records whenever they can."
SGI's executive director, Rick Blum, echoed Parker's concerns: "Congress said there must be an independent coach to help the public leap the hurdles agencies put in place to getting documents. The Justice Department defends agencies against hundreds of lawsuits by requesters, so it can't provide the necessary independence. Shifting funding from the ombudsman to the Justice Department only feeds the problem that Congress tried to fix."
The Justice Department opposed the bill. But Congress passed it anyway and the president signed it into law. NNA and others have begun working on the funding and development of OGIS at the Archives.
But Sen. Patrick Leahy, a sponsor of the OPEN Government Act, unveiled the Justice Department's intent on a hostile takeover of OGIS in a speech Jan. 23:
"Such a move is not only contrary to the express intent of the Congress, but it is also contrary to the very purpose of this legislation-to ensure the timely and fair resolution of Americans' FOIA requests. Given its abysmal record on FOIA compliance during the last seven years, I hope that the administration will reconsider this unsound decision and enforce this law as the Congress intended," Leahy said.
Parker, co-publisher and executive editor for Recorder Community Newspapers in Stirling, N.J., said NNA would oppose the move.
FOIA gets boost from new law
From staff reports
Journalists and other open government advocates celebrated the start of a new year by heralding the passage of a law strengthening the Freedom of Information Act.
President George W. Bush signed the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2007 on the last day of the year. The legislation increases accountability for government responses to information requests from the public and the media.
The legislation broadens the scope of information that can be requested, creates an ombudsman office to act as a mediator between people asking for information and the agency to facilitate requests in an efficient and timely manner. It also establishes a tracking system for requests, requires more timeliness with regard to responses and awards attorneys fees if a citizen is forced to sue to receive information.
The law also expanded the definition of news media to cover bloggers with language stating, "[T]he term 'a representative of the news media' means any person or entity that gathers information of potential interest to a segment of the public, uses its editorial skills to turn the raw materials into a distinct work, and distributes that work to an audience."
Congress has worked on the law since 2005. Sponsors were Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia was an early cosponsor.
At least 11 journalism industry trade groups and representative organizations backed passage of the legislation, including the National Newspaper Association, the Newspaper Association of America and the Society for Professional Journalists.
The new law takes effect on Jan. 1, 2009.
- National Newspaper Association and the Society for Professional Journalists
Public notice site hits 100 percent
By Sean Ireland, Publications Editor
A longtime goal of the Georgia Press Association was met this month when the last of Georgia's 159 counties began to have public notices published online at www.GeorgiaPublicNotice.com.
The Web site now offers 100 percent coverage of public notices from across Georgia. Anyone with Internet access can find a public notice from any Georgia county online at the site.
Given that local public notices are also published in the legal organ newspaper for each county in the state, the Georgia newspaper industry can boast of providing the widest possible access to public notices of any state in the nation.
"This is a great milestone to get accomplished for all of the newspapers in Georgia, and more importantly, for the citizens of Georgia," said GPA President Judy Fleming, general manager of the Early County News of Blakely.
"That is a goal we set for the association, and it included a number of nonmember papers to achieve. This initiative really shows the commitment of the GPA to continued growth of all media in the state," said GPA Past President Burgett Mooney, publisher of the Rome News-Tribune. A key goal of Mooney's term, which ended in June, was to get all of Georgia's public notices online.
"I think you will see more GPA-sponsored online content aggregation in the future. I think it is very important for the people of Georgia to have an independent processor of legal notice information, especially at this point in time when a vast majority of Georgians still get their local news, notice and advertising information from printed newspapers," he said. "We understand some people would like to receive this information online and have made that possible, through an extension of the oldest and most trusted source of information in the state, the newspaper."
The Web site is a database of public notices - everything from adoptions to public hearings to probate and election notices and foreclosures and seizures - searchable by county, by map, by category or by keyword. It is free to all users. The GPA and the state's newspaper industry started the Web site more than four years ago as a way to increase access to the notices and to fend off potential legislative efforts to use third-party companies or government Web sites for publication of notices.
Other states have seen such efforts, which would reduce overall access to the public. Several companies nationwide have begun to mount legislative lobbying and public relations campaigns to win the right to publish public notices.
"A lot of people and newspapers didn't realize that public notices could be taken from newspapers," Fleming said of the push to get notices from the legal organs of the final counties online. "Once they grasped that public access could be lost, we went forward from there.
"It took a lot of hard work from the board members and a lot of people to get this accomplished. It took everybody getting involved." Mooney agreed. "All newspaper owners and publishers in the state of Georgia are committed to the protection of the most trusted brand in each community, the local newspaper," he said. "Newspapers will continue to be the trusted brand, built over 100-plus years in the state, carrying the information all Georgians need to conduct official business. All newspapers understand the critical part they play as the Fourth Estate, and are fully prepared to implement the use of new technology to continue the vital role they have as stewards."
The key now will be for each legal organ newspaper to continue to upload its weekly public notices to the Web site. "I don't think that will be a problem at all," Fleming said. "Once people get used to doing it, it becomes a part of their job. You might see someone change jobs, but [uploading public notices to the site] should be high up on the priority list. It should be a part of the job description to send the notices to GeorgiaPublicNotice.com."
"This is the most far-reaching and most successful newspaper cooperative effort to bring important information to the people of any state," Mooney said. "The leadership of the newspaper association in the state of Georgia is fully committed to aiding community newspapers in the important role they play in citizen's lives."
