angryThis rate increase has the effect of shifting costs from the large publishers, such as Time Warner, to smaller publications, such as The New York Review, Commentary, The National Review, and The Nation. These unfair and onerous rate hikes threaten the future of many smaller, independent publications.
These magazines and journals are an invaluable laboratory for political ideas and discourse. Their disappearance would be bad for our media and worse for our democracy.
Congressional hearings have been scheduled for next Tuesday, October 30. Prior to that, people are encouraged to sign a congressional email petition.
Free Press, working with a wide variety of small publishers, is hoping to collect well over 100,000 signatures in order to get the attention of the committee members prior to the hearing.
This is especially relevant to writers and readers in alternative fields such as Paganism and speculative fiction. Postage hikes (not helped by concurrent rises in paper prices) are killing the industry. We've lost far more Pagan magazines than we've gained in the last decade. Science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazines are struggling or closing too. And don't overlook the pattern: this is another example of the current trend to take money away from ordinary individuals and small businesses for the aggrandizement of a few rich people and big businesses. That's not the route to a healthy economy or a happy, educated population.
October 30 2007, 18:06:45 UTC 13 years ago
What??
It's like they decided to make the postage fee schedule as confusing as taxes.
October 30 2007, 18:32:39 UTC 13 years ago