Beginning with the August 4th edition, Park City’s twice weekly newspaper, The Park Record, stopped home delivery and is now being delivered exclusively via U.S. Mail. KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher has more.
The only subscribers receiving home delivery were the 1900 households in the 84060 and 84098 zip codes. Those living outside of Park City and the Snyderville Basin had already transitioned to mail. Publisher Andy Bernhard reports that after two mail deliveries – he’s only had three cancellations. He says he considers that a “major victory.”
“It was truly such a pleasant surprise for me to not get inundated with calls about problems associated with the change in delivery. It was really well done by my staff here and so I was really proud of that.”
This isn’t the first time the Park Record has only used the postal service to deliver the paper. Prior to October 2007, all papers were delivered in mailboxes. That was before Bernhard negotiated an agreement with the Newspaper Agency Corporation. At that time, the agency was also responsible for daily delivery of the Salt Lake Tribune, which has recently gone to all digital access with the exception of Sunday delivery.
“It was a purely cost perspective. Our delivery company Utah Delivery Forces who's an independent contractor for us, was pretty much losing money on our route, and we entered into an agreement with them when Media One closed. And so, this guy, all of a sudden lost a whole bunch of his delivery customers. And so, without the volume of publishers home delivering, he was losing a ton of money, and it would have cost us to raise our rates to an unjustifiable amount.”
He says they haven’t received a lot of calls from subscribers wondering where their paper is...
“I think we did a really good job with messaging, our subscribers through email, and in the paper, and so it was really no surprise to anyone.”
Every Wednesday and Saturday morning the papers are dropped directly at local post offices – so they don’t have to go through the mail, down to the valley and then hauled back up the canyon. Papers, he says, can be placed directly in post office boxes or sent out with mail carriers to a home’s mailbox. If you have a post office box, he says delivery is by 11 a.m. It may be later for those who have mail delivered to their homes.
