Deadlines: Everybody loves them. Said no one, ever

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Still, deadlines are a necessary evil in the newspaper business, right up there with ink-stained hands, coffee that’s been reheated three times, and explaining—again—that we do not control the mail. With that said, the newspaper’s deadlines are returning to their original footing, and for once, the change actually makes sense.

The reason is simple: the newspaper now has the opportunity to once again be a Wednesday publication.

If you’ve been around newspapers for any length of time, you know publication schedules tend to wander. Wednesdays become Thursdays, Thursdays flirt with Fridays, and suddenly everyone’s asking why the paper doesn’t arrive when it used to. Over the years, this newspaper has teetered between Wednesday and Thursday schedules, not because we enjoy change, but because logistics demanded it.

In 2025, the paper was locked into a Thursday publication date for one very unromantic reason: transportation. Getting the newspaper from the printing plant back to the office became a weekly logistical puzzle, complicated by a shortage of drivers on both ends of the operation.

The printing plant is roughly three hours away. Even with us “splitting the difference,” which we currently do, it still requires a three-hour round trip by newspaper staff and a three-hour round trip by the press plant each week just to deliver the paper. That’s six hours of windshield time before anyone even starts talking about racks, routes or mail.

That setup created a new problem, and this one landed squarely on subscribers. When the paper didn’t arrive back at the office until around 10 a.m. on Thursdays, mailed copies were already behind schedule. By the time they were dropped off at the post office, they were effectively a day late before they ever entered the system.

Now layer on the inconvenient truth that the U.S. Postal Service has become increasingly lackluster over the past half decade, and you’ve got the perfect storm. The newspaper suffered. Subscribers suffered. Phones rang. Emails came in. And no matter how many times deadlines were moved earlier, the core issue never changed.

That part isn’t fixed by shifting a clock or changing a calendar date.

What is changing is this: by returning to a Wednesday publication date, newspapers will now hit the racks and enter the mail stream a full day earlier. Will every subscriber suddenly receive their paper sooner? Maybe. Maybe not. Once the paper is dropped at the post office, it’s officially out of our hands.

But getting it there earlier at least gives readers a fighting chance, and that’s the goal.

Here’s where a little perspective helps.

Newspapers mail under a second-class, or periodicals, permit. Over the past decade, newspapers have increasingly been treated like the red-headed stepchild of the postal system. The paperwork is endless. The rules are rigid. The hoops are plentiful, and somehow, they seem to get smaller every year.

Imagine if this were your business. Every week, you pay for a service. You follow the rules. You file electronically. You submit forms. You pay the bills. You do everything required of you. And yet, once or twice a week, your phone rings with customers complaining that their order never arrived.

You didn’t mess up. The customer didn’t mess up. But somehow, you’re still the one apologizing.

That’s modern newspaper publishing in a nutshell.

This newspaper pays between $11,000 and $15,000 a year to the post office to deliver subscriptions. That’s for one paper. Publishers with multiple newspapers multiply that number quickly. I know publishers with eight, twelve, even thirty-two papers. Same problem. Same frustration. Same ridiculous hoop.

Here’s the irony. Many years ago, the newspaper industry was approached by the USPS. They wanted our business. So the industry fired the kids on bicycles, shut down hometown delivery routes, and handed distribution over to what was, at the time, a reliable system.

If any insurance agency reading this would like to insure a fleet of kids on bikes, I will gladly revisit that idea tomorrow. I’m only half joking.

Before anyone thinks this is an attack on local postal workers, it’s not. This isn’t about your hometown post office. They’re stuck dealing with the same over-regulated system. This is a nationwide issue that has made things harder—not easier—for everyone involved.

So yes, deadlines are changing. Yes, the paper is moving back to Wednesdays. And yes, the hope is that a day earlier on our end turns into a day earlier for you.

At the end of the day, the newspaper is doing what it has always done—adjusting, adapting and fighting to get local news into your hands as quickly as possible.

And if your paper is late this week, don’t yell at the carrier. Don’t yell at the office staff. And don’t yell at your neighbor.

Trust me—we’re yelling enough for all of us.

Robertson County News advertising and story deadlines are Fridays by 5 p.m.

The Silsbee Bee advertising and story deadlines are Mondays by 3 p.m.