Internet speeds newspaper delivery

This newspaper is regularly receiving calls and emails from subscribers who are unhappy because of postal delays. For example on Monday we received an email from a Lincoln subscriber complaining because she had not yet received her Nov. 2 paper.

Not so many years ago we could count on papers being delivered to Lincoln on Thursday and Kansas City on Friday, but that is no longer the case.

Here at the newspaper office, we did not receive our copy of the Nov. 2, Hebron paper until Monday. The Red Cloud paper no longer arrives on Thursday. It is usually here on Friday but some weeks it takes even longer.

On Monday it appeared we got more pieces of first class mail than we received the entire previous week.

Indications are that the mail service will continue to grow slower.

But thankfully there is an alternative. All subscribers to this newspaper are eligible to receive at no additional cost a subscription to our electronic edition which is generally available late Wednesday afternoon.

Reading the e-edition is not the same as our printed edition. The two are similar but not identical. The e-edition has colored photos and links to stories not found in the printed edition. Some people prefer it, others who prefer reading the printed edition just skim the e-edition, perhaps looking at the photos and getting an early hint about the stories they will find in the printed edition.

We have a subscriber who has a printed edition delivered to her post office box address. She could return to the post office Wednesday afternoon and pick up her paper but she doesn’t. Instead on Wednesday evening she makes her weekly grocery shopping list from the e-edition.

A newspaper colleague in a nearby town no longer bothers to take the printed version home from work. Instead she relies exclusively on her paper’s e-edition.

Like it or not, you are missing out if you don’t have an e-sub to your weekly paper.

With winter and the holidays coming, we expect poor roads and an increased volume of mail will cause even more delivery delays. And from the sneak peaks we have gotten with regard to holiday advertising plans, there are promotions coming our subscribers will not want to miss out on because the paper was late. An e-sub helps to insure the timely delivery of news and advertising.