Mail Biz in the Stim

Ellen Paul owns PaulandPartners, a mailshop located in the Dulles corridor of the Washington, DC, Metro area. Ellen writes for Marketing AdVents, which I edit. Her May column came accompanied by this bleak note: “Another sad commentary on the plight of the USPS. But that's all that's in the USPS news of late: Letter carriers run over and killed by their own trucks...carriers (and the public!) stealing the mail to get the prescription drugs therein... carriers hoarding so much mail that their homes catch on fire...it's funny (in a really bleak ‘film noire’ way). There's no ‘news’ in the USPS news right now. It's about survival. Even the intelligent barcode has been practically abandoned as over-hyped and too expensive to introduce in this market.” That's an insider view of The Mailing Business 2009. Who would argue?