Looking for Answers to Paper Shortages (publishersweekly.com)

As the busiest mailing and shipping season begins, the United States Postal Service reported new service delivery performance metrics showing strong service performance for First-Class Mail (91.4 percent) and Marketing Mail (92.4 percent). Service performance for Periodicals continued to trend above 82 percent for the first seven weeks of the fiscal first quarter. First quarter-to-date service performance scores covering the period Oct. 1 through Nov. 19 included: *First-Class Mail: 91.4 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of 2.6 percentage points from the fourth quarter. *Marketing Mail: 92.4 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fourth quarter. *Periodicals: 83.2 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, an improvement of .5 percentage points from the fourth quarter.

New York lawmakers should wait until next year before taking up a broad privacy bill that would require companies to obtain consumers' opt-in consent before processing their data for ad targeting, the Association of National Advertisers urged Wednesday. "The bill was introduced in the New York Senate just two weeks ago,” Dan Jaffe, ANA executive vice president for government relations, and Christopher Oswald, ANA senior vice president for government relations, wrote Wednesday to state lawmakers. “As a result, it has not received the benefit of careful and rigorous consideration by lawmakers, which is necessary to develop a workable privacy law that will significantly impact New York businesses and consumers alike.” The proposed New York Privacy Act (SB 6701), introduced by state Senator Kevin Thomas, would also give consumers the right to access, correct and delete data about themselves.

U.S. publishers are not alone in experiencing problems with their postal system. Their neighbors to the north are also unhappy with theirs — for different reasons. A coalition of Canadian news publishers is demanding that Canada Post reverse a decision that would allow consumers to opt out of receiving community newspapers with commercial inserts. These are now seen as junk mail, thanks to the ending of an exemption from Canada Post’s Consumers’ Choice program. As of January 8, 2024, community newspapers with commercial inserts were no longer exempt from Canada Post’s Consumers’ Choice program, which allows Canadians to opt out of receiving ‘junk mail.’