Not with the American Business Media on the case. This is from their morning e-news:

When the Postal Service filed its cost and revenue data by class of mail for its 2007 fiscal year (ending September 30, 2007), it showed that, as a class, Periodicals failed by a wide margin to cover the postal costs directly attributable to the class. In comments filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission last week, ValPak – a major mailer of advertising coupons – contended that in light of the requirement in both the old and the new postalThe laws that each class of mail produce revenues at least covering its attributable costs, the Commission should exercise its authority to find the Periodicals rates illegal and direct that they be increased by a double-digit percentage to bring them into conformance.

ValPak contended that the Commission may and must take this action even though such an increase would be several times larger than the increase permitted under the applicable CPI rate cap. Alternatively, it said, if the Commission finds that it cannot require an increase above the cap (as ABM had previously contended), it should at least demand that the entire CPI-based increase be targeted on “low-volume, high-cost magazines that are circulated nationally.” Such an increase, of course, would hit ABM member publications especially hard.

ABM will file reply comments by the February 13 deadline and will show that the shortfall cited by ValPak fails to take into account that the present Periodicals rates with the 11.8% average increase were in effect for only two and a half months of FY 2007, that the new rate design will likely have cost-reduction effects and that the new flat sequencing system to be deployed this year will have a further impact on lessening Periodicals costs. ABM will also repeat that the new postal reform law does not permit “piercing” the rate cap even if there is a revenue shortfall and that the effect of an excessive increase on Periodicals, which make up less than 4% of mail volume, would have a nearly immeasurable effect on other mailers.

Periodical mailers, as our clients - National Federation of Independent Business, the Marine Corps League and the Daughters of the American Revolution - will be paying 2.7% more to mail their magazines beginning May 12, 2008. Not good news, but the postal service warned us last year of this increase. We just didn't know how much.

I'm at Brown Printing, in Waseca, Minn., to press check American Spirit and Semper Fi using virtual proofing, but more on that later today. Rex, please imagine me standing under the bank clock in my Hammock tee.

In 2001, when I attended a seminar and the speaker mentioned virtual proofing, I thought that it would never be possible. Monitors are RGB (red, green, blue) and web offset presses are CMYK (cyan or blue, magenta or red, yellow and black). But through the magic of software, presses can now run to match an image on a computer screen. This eliminates the need for hard copy proofs, which the printing industry has used for years.

I know that for most of you, this isn't very exciting, but for a printing geek, like me, it is. In the photos above, there are two 23" Apple Cinema Display monitors showing on screen images of what the web presses need to match. I'm matching the printed form to the image on the screen from the upcoming March/April issue of Semper Fi, the magazine of the Marine Corps League.

Below, here is the cover of the March/April issue of American Spirit, the magazine for the Daughters of the American Revolution, on the monitors.