Publisher Worries Post Office Cuts Will Hurt Oologah Newspaper

The US Postal Service decided to close more than 250 mail processing centers across the country.

The move will eliminate 28,000 jobs. We won't know until the end of the month if Tulsa's mail distribution center would close.

Monday's announcement will affect everything from bills and greeting cards to Netflix DVDs and, in some places, the local newspaper.

In Oologah, the newspaper's office is in the heart of downtown. These pages -- the heartbeats of a community.

"They take the local paper because they're from Oologah and they want to know who's playing basketball on Friday night. They want to know what's going on the weekend because they're probably going to participate," said Faith Wylie, co-publisher of the Oologah Lake-Leader.

Wylie relies on the post office to deliver 10,000 copies a week of the Oologah Lake-Leader.

"We mail on Wednesday so people get it on Thursday," she said.

The Oologah post office across the street delivers to most subscribers. But readers who live in Owasso, Nowata and other outlying towns -- their papers go through the distribution center in Tulsa. It's a facility in limbo -- in danger of being consolidated into the Oklahoma City center.

"If it has to go to Oklahoma City and back, I'm afraid they aren't going to get Thursday's paper until the next Monday or Tuesday," Wylie said.  She said it's not practical for the paper to hire a delivery person, for a variety of reasons.

By that time, the headlines are old news, advertiser specials are expired and Wylie worries, subscribers will vanish.

"If you lose 10 percent of your readers and 10 percent of your revenue, that's a serious hit in this economy," Wylie said.

But the U.S. Post Office is also bleeding money and customers. It's racked up billions in debt. Mail volume is down nearly 30 percent the past decade.

"If they're worried about mail volume one would think they'd be focused on service," Wylie said. "We're already doing all sorts of stuff to meet their automation requirements and it seems like they're almost trying to drive away their customers. And then they complain about low volume."

Wylie's waiting for the headlines to reveal the Post Office's next move, ready to report the news that would make delivering the news much harder.

Monday's announcement to close several hundreds of distribution centers and delay first-class mail is just a proposal, but the changes will likely take place by next spring.

12/01/2011 Related Story: Postal Union Warns Of Service Delays During Tulsa Meeting