Portales newspapers coming to mailboxes starting this week

To our Portales readers:

This news is delivered with regret and a considerable amount of frustration:

Effective immediately, we will no longer be able to deliver The Eastern New Mexico News to your homes in Portales.

Instead, Portales subscribers will receive the paper via the U.S. Postal Service. Wednesday papers will be in your mailbox most Wednesdays; Sunday papers will arrive Mondays, except for holidays, when delivery will be Tuesdays. Complete editions will continue to be posted on our website - easternewmexiconews.com - on Tuesday and Saturday nights as usual for print and electronic subscribers.

In addition, we will have newspapers available at no charge to subscribers this Wednesday. We’ll be in the old Portales News-Tribune building on the square from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. No need to prove you have a subscription. Just tell us the papers you’ve missed and we’ll have them available for you to pick up.

Current subscribers will receive an additional month at no charge if you will allow us to convert your subscription to mail. You can also expect a phone call from our office (if we have your number on file) and a more personal explanation about what’s happened. If you’d like to cancel or transfer your print subscription to online only, that will also be an option.

We’re doing all we can to make this transition as smooth as possible.

Subscribers in Clovis, Texico and Farwell will not be impacted; those communities will continue to receive home delivery. The carriers who service those areas remain dedicated and we’re forever grateful.

We’ve been trying to avoid this situation in Portales for some time now, but it’s become clear we have no choice but to cease home delivery.

In recent weeks, subscribers have no doubt noticed late and undelivered papers. On Wednesday we received reports that close to 200 papers were not in subscribers’ yards or on their porches as scheduled; we contracted to have those missed papers delivered, but many of those never made it to their intended destinations either.

The reasons for the missed deliveries are not clear as we’ve received conflicting reports.

What we know for sure is we cannot, with any confidence, offer a reliable home delivery service to Portales residents anymore. We’ve been advertising for contractors to do the job for months, but no one has applied. We’ve considered increasing the pay for carriers — it already comes out to twice the minimum wage with customer tips often accompanying good service — but that would force a newspaper price increase and nobody wants that.

The only solution, at least for now, is for Portales subscribers to receive the paper by mail and/or online. Single copies will remain for sale at multiple locations around the city, including Walmart, Allsup’s and Stripes stores.

Like you, we’re frustrated by the changes taking place in our industry and in the world overall. The pandemic has hit us and other local businesses in ways we never could have imagined, especially in the workforce.

We’re still here, we’re still trying to adjust, and we appreciate your patience and loyalty as we all work our way to a new normal.

— David Stevens

Publisher