Springer Nature’s first annual report as a public company shows growth in open access and continued investment in technology to improve value for the community

Keep US Posted — a nonprofit advocacy group of consumers, nonprofits, newspapers, greeting card publishers, magazines, catalogs and small businesses — is warning Americans that stamp prices are set to increase on July 9 for the second time in 2023, and cautioning that if such unprecedented and excessive postage increases continue, Americans could be facing a government bailout of the U.S. Postal Service. The July increase marks the third such increase in 12 months — the most mailing rates have increased during the U.S. Postal Service’s 247-year history. Yoder continued, “DeJoy’s stated intent has been to use stamp increases to bring in additional revenue, yet each hike drives down mail demand at a progressively faster rate and increases internal costs, meaning less revenue for USPS, no matter how much more a stamp costs. The result is additional strain on the system. Congress passed bipartisan postal reform in 2022 intending to prevent these excessive postage increases by bringing financial solvency to the Postal Service but USPS, under DeJoy’s leadership, has plowed ahead with pre-planned stamp increases, which will continue every six months. The American people need Congress to step in now and bring additional oversight to the USPS rate strategy, otherwise we could be looking at a situation where a federal bailout is necessary."

A U.S. Appellate Court ruling in Washington DC upheld the U.S. Postal Service’s pricing methodology, knocking down a challenge from UPS that categorized it as unfair and anticompetitive, according to a report in Bloomberg. The three-judge panel found that the USPS’s transfer of some profits from its monopoly on first-class mail delivery to offset parcel delivery costs did not amount to a subsidy of those operations, which is forbidden under the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The USPS’s pricing is set by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). Click Read More below for additional information.

Commenting on the results, Chief Executive Robert Thomson said: “Fiscal 2017 was a significant year for News Corp as we saw tangible improvement in profitability, powered by the fast-growing Digital Real Estate Services segment, and we charged a premium for premium content while focusing on operating efficiencies. News Corp led the global debate about content value and values, prompting the digital platforms to address a dysfunctional content eco-system, in which the fake and the fraudulent have flourished. We are now in advanced discussions with those platforms over the creation of payment mechanisms for news of verified veracity. HarperCollins posted higher EBITDA and margins this year through poignant books with broad appeal in the U.S., such as The Magnolia Story and Hillbilly Elegy. We believe that the emergence of digital audio and our expanding global footprint are potent sources of long-term growth. Click Read More below for additional detail.