It’s Unfair to Call It ‘Junk Mail’

As a Los Angeles mailer of long standing and a representative of the mailing industry, I resent the constant inference of use of the name “junk mail” to describe direct mail or advertising mail (“Cut Proposed in Postal Rates Used by Junk Mailers,” Jan. 27).

If you use “junk mail” to describe a billion-dollar industry, why don’t you call newspapers by their correct name, “junk news”? After all, the ads that fill your paper are unsolicited and of no value to most of your readers. The same goes for many of your articles and commentaries. And old newspapers make larger piles in garbage landfills. I would go so far as calling what you watch on television “junk TV.”

Direct mail, like newspapers and TV, is a medium that is used and pays for itself and is part of the seventh-largest industry in the country. Besides, it is the only profit sector of the post office picking up the deficits of first-class and second-class mail.

MYRON S. CRESPIN

President

Adcraft Business Mail

Los Angeles