Maritsa Georgiou is the journalist who reported what was happening in Montana August, 2020, in the run up to the election, as the nation became aware that the U.S. Postal Service was removing so-lalled "blue boxes," where people can deposit mail, from many locations. Today, the USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center announced Georgiou had won a Walter Cronkite Award related to the integrity of elections for this coverage. The USC Annenberg Center press release says:
In a pandemic election year particularly reliant on voting by mail, the US Postmaster General implemented nationwide policies whose effect was to gum up and slow down mail delivery. When he put those measures on hold, NBC Montana’s Maritsa Georgiou “clearly had a hand in it,” the judges said. Her “dogged” reporting for this Sinclair-owned station broke the story of mailbox removal in Montana, especially in Democratic areas. “She shined a light on practices that could have disenfranchised Montanans”; her reporting rippled across the nation, prompting more coverage and “ultimately bringing about change.”
Her story was one of 177 nominations for six prizes. The other local category winners were from Milwaukee and Phoenix, decided urban markets.
Georgiou's story is here, dateline August 14, 2020, and an excerpt follows:
NBC Montana confirmed with the Montana State Association of the National Association of Letter Carriers the orders to remove 13 boxes in Missoula, 9 in Bozeman, 3 in Lewistown and 30 in Billings. A source that wishes to remain anonymous sent us the directive for Missoula, which lists addresses in front of the Target store, and several downtown Missoula.
We reached out to the USPS for comment and explanation of the removals.
“For decades, the installation and removal of the Postal Service’s iconic blue collection mail boxes from streets across the country has been based on mail volume received in those boxes,” Kim Frum, a USPS public relations representative wrote. “It is a fluid process and figures can vary from day-to-day. Historically, mail boxes have been removed for lack of use and installed in growth areas.”
Frum added that in the past few years, the USPS has relocated low-use boxes to high traffic areas such as shopping centers, business parks, grocery stores, etc. We responded, asking why boxes in front of a Missoula Target store and other high traffic corridors would have been moved or removed.
This winning story featured several tweets, along with quotes from U.S. Senators Jon Tester and Steve Daines.
Interestingly, in Montana, the Democratic leaning places from which the mailboxes were being removed were among the most urban areas of the state--which in Montana aren't very urban. The implication is that the state's rural areas lean red/Republican, and they were less affected by the removals.
As a related matter, the downgrading of the U.S.P.S. under the leadership of Louis DeJoy is unfortunately continuing, and rural post offices are once again on the chopping block. I'm shocked (not!) that no one has followed my advice to use shared loyalty to the post office as common ground for bringing rural and urban folks together, though others (even the "Gray Lady") have hinted that it's a good idea and has unifying potential. But are urban folks willing to subsidize the higher cost of rural post offices (just because the latter can't achieve economies of scale)? I doubt it. Sigh.
Other posts (and there are many!) about post offices--including the episodic serious threats of closure--are here. This is a recent AP story about changes at the USPS. This story reports on possible wrongdoing by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by Trump.
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