Same-day delivery, same great newspaper
It’s never fun airing your dirty laundry in public, but sometimes it must be done. We must admit that over the past few years it has become increasingly difficult to offer consistent home deliver y to subscribers of the Mar yland Independent. Many of you have contacted us about this problem, and we thank you for your patience and support.
Our delivery problem is directly related to finding and retaining quality carriers in the market. We want to emphasize that this is not reflective of our entire carrier force, but it does represent a sizable number. There are numerous newspaper carriers who do an excellent job and meet or exceed the delivery standards we strive for in every market we serve.
Unfortunately, though, our delivery problem has worsened in recent months and has fallen to a standard that is no longer acceptable to us.
So after significant thought, we have decided to transition our home delivery of the Maryland Independent — 100 percent of it — to the capable hands of the U.S. Postal Service. With this transition, you will still receive your Wednesday and Friday newspapers on the same days each week, but it will now come in your mailbox instead. Our sister papers in Southern Maryland, The Calvert Recorder and The Enterprise, will be doing the same in their markets.
A huge benefit of this change is reliable delivery that you can count on twice a week — and no issues with wet or lost newspapers.
We understand that for some of you who enjoy reading the Maryland Independent first thing in the morning, this will be a significant change. We apologize in advance for this inconvenience, but we hope you understand that this decision was not arrived at easily, and it was for the good of the product as a whole. We knew that if we did not make this change now, we could further damage our relationship with you, our readers. We needed to move back to consistent delivery times that you pay for and rightfully expect.
If you receive home delivery of the newspaper, but collect your mail at the post office, we ask that you call our subscriber services at 301-645-8945, so that we can verify your mailing address in our system and ensure uninterrupted service of the Maryland Independent.
This change will not affect our delivery to dealer locations such as convenience stores, grocery stores and other retail locations with newsstands. Those copies will still be delivered in the morning, at their current times, every Wednesday and Friday.
And of course, we will continue to provide the same award-winning coverage of local news and sports on which we have always prided ourselves. We will continue to aggressively and accurately cover local government, schools, crime and environmental news. We will continue to chronicle the lives and times of our neighbors in the community section.
Full access will also continue to be available on www.somdnews.com, with the full electronic edition of the newspaper available first thing in the morning. You can also download our mobile app at somdnews.com/newsapp.
We thank all of our subscribers for your support throughout the years, and your patience and understanding as we make this transition. We look forward to serving as your hometown, community newspaper for many years to come.
If you have any questions, you may contact me directly at dfike@chespub.com. Also, feel free to contact Art Crofoot, our publisher, at acrofoot@chespub.com or 301-848-0175, or Rob Perry, our editor, at rperry@somdnews.com or 240-561-1622.