FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK: How to get your Progress back in the mail

By VERNON ROBISON

Once again, we come to a major turning point for The Progress. Due to ever increasing costs, it has become necessary for us to rethink our long-held distribution model. This is the last week that The Progress will be delivered to every postal customer in the Logandale, Overton and Moapa zip codes.

The tradition of sending the paper to every Moapa Valley post office box has been in place since the founding of The Progress 36 years ago. At that time, my uncle John Z. Robison made the decision that the post office was the easiest and most convenient way to distribute his new publication. That may have been the right decision then, but times and business conditions have changed drastically since then.

When I took over management of the newspaper back in 2004, the tides had already begun to change. It was apparent then that our mail distribution was a heavy expense burden for the business. But the decision was made to continue that tradition all the same; at least as long as the business could bear the expense.

Extreme production cost increases since the COVID pandemic have turned the tide on that decision. Since 2019, our postage costs have increased by roughly 20 percent. During the same period our print costs have ballooned by about 40 percent! And so, it is really no longer much of a decision. It has become a business necessity to cut the expense of postal distribution.

What does that mean for our Moapa Valley readers? Simply put, it will mean taking an extra step or two to get your newspaper each week.

The Progress has never been hard to find. It has always been available in news stands and on shop counters all over town. That won’t change. You can pick it up at the grocery store, the gas station, the convenience store, or just about any other local shop and restaurant that you visit during the week. In addition, we plan to be adding some new locations in a few convenient spots around town. So keep an eye out for those.

What does this mean for our Virgin Valley readers? Well, for you there will be no change at all. You can still get the newspaper in all the same places throughout Mesquite and Bunkerville as it has always been.

But here is an important point for our readership in both valleys. While we are no longer able to do a blanket mailing out to the entire Moapa Valley community, there is still hope for interested readers to receive the newspaper free in the mail again soon. And that hope extends, not just to Moapa Valley residents, but also to our Virgin Valley readership as well!

According to the U.S. Postal Service rules, if a publication like ours has at least half of its total distribution going to people who have formally requested it, then it is eligible for periodicals mailing privileges. This class would allow us much more affordable postage rates. So if we could accomplish that, we might begin mailing The Progress again FREE to those who want it in both the Moapa Valley and the Virgin Valley.

Of course, there are a lot of complexities to such a venture. It will take us a little time to get it off the ground. But the first and biggest step in that process must be for enough of our readership to make the formal request to receive the paper in the mail.

So now we need your help. For the next few months we will be printing a requestor form in each edition of The Progress. Readers who would like to have the newspaper mailed to them can simply clip out that item, fill in the blanks and send it back to us as instructed on the form. We will gather all of the submissions that come in.

In the end, if we receive enough of these requests to reach 50 percent of our weekly distribution, then we will be off to the races. That is our desired path forward.

Please rest assured that there is no nefarious purpose being served in gathering this simple data from you. We have absolutely no interest in sending you junk mail. You have my word that the information will only be used to eventually mail a weekly newspaper to your address. And we are not asking for money. The requestor subscription would be free, just as the paper has always been.

To conclude, change is always uncomfortable. It is tough to break out of the status quo. There is usually some pain involved. I cannot promise that this latest change will be easy, seamless or painless.

But I can assure our readership that we at The Progress are feeling the pain of it right along with you.
I can also assure that The Progress is dedicated to providing the same reliable local news coverage as we have for nearly four decades now. That kind of coverage has never been more vitally important to our communities than it is today.

So please be patient with us as we navigate this major change in our distribution to Moapa Valley. And don’t forget to look for the requestor form in this and future editions. Fill it out if you want to get the paper back in your mailboxes.

Thank you for reading The Progress!