USPS should be held accountable

Newspapers have long experience in being accountable for mistakes made in the newsroom. How many businesses often run corrections when they make a mistake, or willingly publish letters criticizing the business? 

Any quality newspaper should always be accountable and demand better of itself. 

The same should hold true for the United States Postal Service, which provides a key link in the chain between us here in the newsroom and many of our readers. 

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a ruling in the case of USPS vs. Konan, the court limited the circumstances under which plaintiffs may recover damages related to lost, delayed or mishandled mail. According to the National Newspaper Association, “by reinforcing sovereign immunity protections and narrowing the interpretation of the Postal Service’s “sue-and-be-sued” clause, the ruling reduces meaningful avenues for legal recourse when delivery failures cause financial harm.”

According to SCOTUS Blog, the case emerged from a conflict between a landlord and postal workers in Euless, Texas. The landlord spent years fighting to have her mail and mail belonging to her tenants delivered to a shared mailbox, but postal workers regularly held it at the post office or returned it to the sender, contending that Konan had not met identification requirements for all addressees.

Ultimately the landlord sued, with the court finding that the USPS could not be sued over intentionally misdelivered mail.

We hold ourselves accountable, but we also spend a lot of time ensuring your paper gets to you on time. Deadlines govern our lives here at the Tribune, and all departments must work in concert to ensure we get papers to the post office in time. It starts with the front office relaying information to the sales and editorial departments so we can pursue clients and stories — not to mention ensuring we’re paid to run on these tight deadlines. 

It takes the sales team ensuring ads are sold in time and the makeup of an ad is relayed to the designers for creation. 

It takes the editorial department reporting and writing stories on time so the designers can lay out pages in a timely fashion — we actually have tighter deadlines throughout our Monday and Wednesday press days to avoid overwhelming the press room at once. 

And, of course, the pages need to be laid out in time for the pressman to take over and actually print the paper. They need to work with those who stuff inserts into the papers to ensure completed newspapers can be bound up in time to be taken to the post office for delivery. At that point, we’ve done everything we can do and can only hope the USPS holds up its end of the bargain. 

And believe me, whether it’s our fault or not, we hear about it when our readers don’t receive their newspapers on time. It’s frustrating regardless, but when the issue is on our end, we can assess and try to fix whatever caused the delay. 

Hopefully, despite this ruling, our local post office and others across the country maintain their commitment to deliver vital community newspapers on time. After all, a delay turns breaking news into old news all too quickly these days.