Local Blogger Had Scoop On Philadelphia Post Office Closures
By John Ostapkovich
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Most of the Philadelphia post offices on a list for possible closure have been spared, and that news was pried from postal officials not by a politician or reporter, but a blogger.
Evan Kalish, Penn grad student and creator of the blog Going Postal, visits post offices near and far for fun. But the announcement that the network could be scaled back considerably got him to file a Freedom of Information Act request for an update. What he found was that hundreds of post offices were no longer under threat.
"I was pleased to see that 13 out of the 14 post offices in Philadelphia that were studied for closure have been released. They're safe for the time being," Kalish said.
Kalish thinks that postal officials, instead of cutting, need to find new revenue streams from their coast to coast fleet of trucks and stable of facilities.
"For many communities, the post office is not merely a convenience, it's part of their daily livelihood. It's where they get their news," he said. "It's where they meet people and it's how they communicate with the outside world."
