Don't stamp out brainy mags

SMALLER magazines across the country, such as The Nation, the American Spectator, Ms., and The New Republic could end up getting a bad case of what postal officials call "rate shock." The cause is the United States Postal Service's dubious plan to raise the price of mailing periodicals on July 15.

The Nation says its costs could jump by $500,000. But this isn't just whining about the rising costs of doing business. This is a clash pitting big-time publishers against small journals that enrich the public debate far more than their modest budgets suggest.

The new rate increase is based on a plan devised by Time Warner, the mammoth publisher of more than 100 magazines, including Time, People, Fortune, and In Style. Not surprisingly, Time Warner's plan is generally considered fair to the kind of large-circulation magazines that Time Warner publishes. But smaller magazines say that this plan would force them to pay a higher percentage increase than large magazines.

More troubling is the fact that the Postal Service itself proposed a different plan that would have spread the increases more evenly, so that small publications would have paid less. But the service's Board of Governors, appointed by the president, opted to go with a modification of the Time Warner plan, delaying the implementation until July so that the Postal Service and publishers would have time to adjust to the new plan's complex pricing.

Here's the rub: The Postal Service's mission, set by federal law, is to "bind the nation together through the personal, educational, literary, and business correspondence of the people." It has a history of protecting the spread of information. So whether grandma lives down the street or in another time zone, a stamp for her birthday card costs the same.

Price protection has also been crucial for small magazines, helping them to add politically and socially diverse voices to the public arena. "In short, the post office and press together constituted the most important mechanism for the dissemination of public information at least until the Civil War," Richard B. Kielbowicz writes in his book "News in the Mail: The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700-1860s."

Now, of course, there's the Internet, which makes publishing seem easy and cheap. But as The Nation's president, Teresa Stack, says, mailing out copies to paying subscribers is still largely how small magazines make money. Web content is often an extra that doesn't generate income. Without income these publications can't survive, and the public loses out when those voices are silenced.

Congress should take a fresh look, and pursue a more public -minded rate plan. The post office is no longer a federal agency, and it does have to support itself. But the country still needs a mail service that protects public access to as much information as possible.