Post Offices and Newspapers

When we learned about the evolution of technology and its impact on news media, we talked about the post office as a channel of distribution for newspapers and the original way to increase circulation. An blog article on the Washington Post's website (perhaps ironically) addresses an allegation that the rise of new media and the resulting decline in printed newspapers and periodicals is hurting the post office. Based on last class's readings, it's interesting to consider the arguments for how failing newspapers create impacts elsewhere. Below is an excerpt:

There's an interesting nugget in the prepared testimony of Phillip Herr, the Government Accountability Office's director of physical infrastructure. He suggests that an economic recovery may not trigger an increase in mail volume, "due to continuing social and technological trends that have changed the way that people communicate and use the mail."