Postage Due

"The proposed postal increase," complained New Yorker Publisher David Michaels, "would go far beyond what the magazine business can support." Richard Deems, Hearst Magazines president, said that his company was "terribly disturbed." John J. McCarthy, a vice president of Dow Jones & Co. (the Wall Street Journal), viewed the figures as "horrendous."

These and other protests came last week as magazines and newspapers fought another round with the U.S. Postal Service over a scheduled rise in second-class mail rates. It was the publishers' turn to lodge "exceptions" to a hearing examiner's report that had upheld the Postal Service proposals. The industry views the increase of some 150% over five years as ruinous (TIME, Jan. 10) and the Magazine Publishers Association is arguing for a phased increase of 50% over five years.

The rate increases go next to the five-member Postal Rate Commission for possible modification and then to the nine Governors of the Postal Service for final approval. At that point, the publishers can take their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals. However, M.P.A. President Stephen Kelly and others believe that new legislation from Congress is a more promising route. The publishers have already started making their argument on Capitol Hill.

Hog Wild. In recent testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights, Time Inc. Board Chairman Andrew Heiskell said that a huge second-class increase could compromise the First Amendment guarantee of a free press by affecting magazines' ability to survive. He cited some potentially disastrous arithmetic: "pretax earnings of all magazines in 1970 were about $50 million. Under the present proposal, magazines would pay $130 million more for mail service by 1976 . . . Magazines can be killed by Government, by denying them the revenues that they require to exist, or by making it impossible for them to distribute their product."

Senator Sam Ervin, the subcommittee chairman, agreed that press freedom could be curtailed "by exorbitant charges on distribution of materials," and suggested the Postal Service should be considered an essential distribution vehicle "just like the air waves for broadcast media." Democratic Congressman Charles Wilson, a member of the House Post Office Committee, believes a public service like the mails should not be allowed to set rates so high as to limit its use. Said Wilson of the Postal Service: "They've gone hog wild." How many other members of Congress agree remains to be seen.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.