The Day delivered one day late

UZHHOROD — It is common knowledge that every issue of a daily newspaper is good only for one day, so it is no coincidence that two things-bread and a newspaper-are especially valued for being fresh. Transcarpathians, however, can buy an issue of a Kyiv-based newspaper only the following afternoon, while a Saturday issue become available on Monday at the earliest.

Toward the end of 2006, Mykola Rostov, the newly appointed head of the Transcarpathian branch of Ukrposhta, set about reforming this structure, obviously with the good intention of upgrading its services. No one minded, of course. Questions arose after Rostov described his reform: the transfer of the central mail processing station from Uzhhorod to Mukachiv, the closure of a number of raion post offices and their replacement by fewer offices meant to service several districts each. In his statements for the press Rostov argued that these measures would save a lot of money and that the post’s partners and clients would appreciate the higher-quality service.

The editors of raion newspapers were the first to raise alarm and for good reason. Imagine this: raion newspapers are published in Berehove and Vynohradiv and then shipped to Mukachiv and Irshava (30-40 kilometers away) for sorting. After sorting by address, they are shipped back to Mukachiv and Vynohradiv where they finally reach subscribers and newsstands. The transportation costs are, of course, borne by the editorial offices, so the postal service generates additional revenues.

Mykola Horvat, the editor of the city newspaper Berehovo, described how the new postal service works: “Printed copies of all local newspapers (there are eight published in Berehove) have to be at the dispatching office at 2p.m. to be loaded in a van and taken to Mukachiv, where they are sorted and brought back to Berehove on Saturday morning for distribution. In other words, all newspapers, both the regional and all-Ukrainian, become available before lunchtime, whereas readers have over the years become accustomed to buying them in the morning. And I’m not mentioning the quality of sorting in Mukachiv, where Visnyk Berehivshchyny is often mistaken for Berehove...”

City mayors and raion heads where the local post offices were closed were also against this. An interesting fact: out of all rural districts Tiachiv raion has the largest population in Ukraine and yet now it lacks a post office of its own. Now letters and postcards from Ust-Chorna in the mountains must be first sent to Khust and go back to reach the addressee in the raion center or a neighboring village. One is reminded of a joke when parents received their son’s Christmas card at Easter time.

The situation with the regional press is quite similar. In 2006, nearly 90 percent of the regional newspapers were printed by the public corporation Zakarpattia Publishers. From there the copies were brought to the central mail processing station a block away from the print shop. Rostov’s reform resulted in the transfer of the processing center to Mukachiv, so now copies of all regional newspapers have to travel from Uzhhorod to Mukachiv and an additional fee is charged at that. Those who thought better than accept such “services” started printing their papers in Lviv, which was welcomed by the Galician publishers.

The Transcarpathian postal service is charging exorbitant fees. Some editorial offices spend less on all the components that are factored in to calculate editorial prices (paper, printing, payroll, honorariums, taxes, travel, rent, and utilities) than on delivery. In the new contracts for 2009 the Transcarpathian postal service forces editorial offices (most of which do not even have cars) to deliver copies of their newspapers to the dispatch office in Mukachiv using their own resources by midnight. Perhaps Yosyp Vinsky ought to restructure the Ukrposhta using the Rostov pattern and transfer the central dispatch office from Kyiv to Rivne, Sumy, or Poltava, thereby forcing Kyiv-based editorial offices, including Holos Ukrainy and Uriadovy kurier, to deliver copies of the newspapers there using their own resources. Then they would understand the situation in which their Transcarpathian colleagues found themselves.

Those who think that the quality of these services has improved are very much mistaken. Experienced postal service workers in Uzhhorod could not protect themselves despite letters and statements of protest, and had to resign. The newly hired workers at the office in Mukacheve still leave much to be desired: readers keep complaining to the editors of regional newspapers about belated or intermittent deliveries. In Uzhhorod every newsstand attendant with a long service record will confirm (off the record, of course) that mail deliveries were timely before Rostov’s reform.

I have spoken with Oleh Havasha, head of the Transcarpathian Oblast State Administration, about the inappropriateness of such innovations and their obviously negative effect on the distribution of the regional press. I asked him to help protect the interests of these periodicals. City mayors and district officials had made similar requests. Havasha, however, explained his support of the head of the regional postal service by the need to speed the delivery of central newspapers to the oblast. This was proof that for the governor the state interests prevail over regional ones, so the Transcarpathian newspaper publishers have only one hope left — to count for help on the newly proclaimed “Ruthenian government.”

Jokes aside, despite all postal reforms and bureaucratic priorities, Kyiv newspapers are not reaching the newsstands in Uzhhorod faster, so the readers have to make do with yesterday’s issues of The Day.

It would be interesting to learn about the relationships between newspaper publishers and the postal service in other regions of Ukraine.