AFTER DEADLINE
Timely delivery is a high priority
By Anne Harpham
Whether you get your morning or afternoon Advertiser at a newsstand or delivered at home, we know that receiving it on time is important.
Just as the newsroom operates under deadlines, our circulation department must meet its own deadlines for delivery of the paper.
Those deadlines, which are aimed at consistency and timeliness in delivery, in turn affect our press run times and deadlines in the newsroom. All of them are established to get papers to you at the time we promise.
Barring press problems, the morning Advertiser is to be delivered to homes on O'ahu by 5:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday and by 6:30 a.m. on Sundays. The afternoon Advertiser, published Monday through Friday, must be delivered by 4:30 p.m.
On news racks, the deadline for the morning paper is 6 a.m.
"Our mission is to deliver to our customers the valuable, time-sensitive product they ordered and paid for, with the service that we promise and they should expect," notes Michael Cusato, vice president of circulation. "We want our customer-service department to be available to help our customers in a courteous, professional manner when they need it."
The circulation department probably deals with readers most directly. Hundreds of employees at The Advertiser gather the news, sell the ads, design the pages and run the presses. But it is the circulation department that deals with traffic and plane schedules to get papers to carriers, and makes sure the carriers are delivering papers on time and where subscribers want them.
It can be a daunting task. Years ago, I participated in the "Walk in Your Shoes" program and spent the better part of a day with one of our district managers. He had the Manoa route, and I ended that day not only exhausted but impressed with all he had to deal with to get that day's edition to readers. He dropped off papers, made sure carriers picked them up, delivered papers when subscribers reported nondelivery, and delivered papers for carriers who were sick or gone. He probably had a bunch of paperwork that I never saw. He wasn't pau with his day when he dropped me off at the News Building.
And he was dealing only with delivering papers on O'ahu. There's also the unique task we have of flying papers from Honolulu to the Neighbor Islands.
The Neighbor Island papers are taken to Honolulu International Airport for flights on various air carriers to Kaua'i, Maui, the Big Island, Moloka'i and Lana'i.
The papers arrive around 3 a.m. each day. We also fly papers directly into Hana, Maui, and Kalaupapa, Moloka'i, daily.
Our home delivery, single-copy retail and rack distribution delivery goals for the Neighbor Islands are 6 a.m. Monday through Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday.
Papers sent to Moloka'i and Lana'i arrive around 6:30 a.m. each day. We have a unique way of getting papers to the Manele Bay Hotel on Lana'i. We fly the papers into Kahului Airport on Maui, where our Lahaina dealer picks them up and places them on a ferry to Lana'i. The rest of the island gets the paper delivered by airplane.
Both our production and circulation departments work hard to get papers out in a timely manner, but there are times when aircraft problems cause late delivery of papers to other islands.
And just as travelers have had to adapt to the changing landscape of airline schedules and fewer available flights, so have we.
For example, on Saturday night, we now charter a flight into Hilo and a flight into Kona in order to get our Sunday newspapers to our Big Island customers by 3:30 a.m.
If you have a question about newspaper delivery, please call our circulation department at 538-6397 (538-NEWS) between 5:30 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8033.
