Every few days I hear from newsagents complaining about how broken newspaper distribution has become, leading to late papers, lost customers and a higher cost for small business newsagents dealing with problems caused by the changes.
This email is one example of the News Corp. related mess:
As we are starting week 2 of the new courier company our papers were once again late. I rang XXX newsagency (as they get their papers just before us and is about 25 mins away) they told us that the van left at 5am from XXX. It took one hour and fifteen minutes to get here to YYY newsagency ( which should take less than 25 mins) We spoke to the delivery driver who said he was doing other deliveries before he dropped off our papers. We received our papers at 6:15am. This is not good enough Its hard enough to run a small business at the moment, we are having regular customers stop their deliveries and the early risers are not coming into the shop. Our paper delivery people have other jobs which means We have to do the deliveries. That causes a flow on effect to all home deliveries and our out of town paper deliveries. We may just be small but we matter. Sunday they got here at 5:15 I wonder if that was because they had no other deliveries.
While Thera are some in News Corp. doing their best to address issues like these, the company is weakened in the circulation management area. It is but a small shadow today of the strong circulation and considerable circulation management resources of years ago.
While never-ending falling circulation is driving the company ‘s commitment, or lack thereof, to circulation resources, it fails to adequately support newsagents.
Note: I removed identifying information as this note could relate to plenty of locations where News Corp. has messed with what was a working system in pursuit of their profit or something.