Wilmington, Delaware’s Star News is about to join the parade of Gannett publications that are delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. The change takes place on Jan. 24. Print delivery faces labor challenges, fluctuating fuel prices, increased competition for door-to-door delivery workers and the switch to digital, the paper argues. Gannett says it has made this change in multiple markets.

In its Government Reform Plan, the Administration made the case for privatizing the Postal Service, and preparing for an eventual change through recommendations coming in August from the President's Task Force on the Postal System. The business community – mailers and suppliers in the paper, printing and technology industries collectively generating $1.4 trillion in sales annually and supporting 7.5 million jobs – strongly believes privatization is not the answer for a postal system in financial distress. "Our troubled postal system can be fixed in a two-step process that does not resort to a draconian solution unproven at the gigantic scale of the U.S. Postal Service," said Art Sackler, Manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal System (C21), which broadly represents the industry. Those two steps would be removing $tens of billions in liabilities to prefund retiree health care imposed on the Postal Service in the short-term, and considering whether and what business model or other changes would have to be made to sustain USPS in the long-term. "The mere prospect of privatization will sow confusion, uncertainty and concern about maintaining mail and package delivery around the country, and stimulating still more volume and revenue loss when the major problem has been a drop off in mail," Sackler added. Click Read More below for additional information.

Walmart is continuing to strengthen its in-house capability to deliver online orders. The discount giant is purchasing the talent, technology platform, and intellectual property of JoyRun, a Silicon Valley-based startup. JoyRun operates a peer-to-peer last-mile delivery platform which enables users to pick up and deliver items for friends and neighbors. JoyRun has built a network of more than 540 official retail partners, and more than 30,000 people have served as drivers or “runners” since the compny launched in 2015. According to Walmart, this acquisition allows it to further augment its delivery team and support ongoing efforts to explore more ways to deliver online orders in the future. In a LinkedIn post announcing the acquisition, Srini Venkatesan, executive VP of Walmart Global Tech, said that JoyRun runners could complement Walmart’s Spark program for independent delivery contractors, as well as third-party delivery providers such as Instacart.