Poland’s oldest news magazine to distribute subscriptions through parcel lockers

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Poland’s oldest weekly news magazine, Tygodnik Powszechny, has partnered with the country’s biggest private delivery firm, InPost, to offer free delivery of subscriptions to the publication through parcel lockers.

Tygodnik Powszechny, which is this month celebrating the 80th anniversary of its founding in March 1945, says that the move was made necessary by the disappearance of kiosks that traditionally distributed the press in Poland as well as the growing struggles of the state postal service.

It hopes the idea can be “revolutionary” for a press industry that has struggled in recent years amid falling paper sales. InPost, meanwhile, now wants to roll out similar press delivery services in other countries where it operates parcel lockers, including the UK and France.

Tygodnik Powszechny says that its new delivery method came in response to readers “regularly reporting problems with availability”. This was often due to “delays in the post office delivering subscriptions” but also because “sometimes, especially in smaller towns, there were simply not enough copies” available for purchase locally.

Poland’s state post office, Poczta Polska, has long been suffering financial problems. Last year, it offered 15% of staff voluntary redundancy as part of a “transformation plan”.

Meanwhile, the small kiosks that used to dot the streets of Poland have been rapidly disappearing. In December, Ruch – a state-owned firm that once had over 31,000 outlets around Poland – closed down the last of its kiosks, which were a major distributor of newspapers and magazines.

Over the last two decades, InPost has developed into a major logistics operator in Poland and elsewhere in Europe. In particular, it has pioneered the use of parcel lockers, of which it has over 25,000 around Poland.

Under the firm’s new partnership with Tygodnik Powszechny, readers can sign up for a six-month or annual subscription to the magazine, which will then be delivered for free to a parcel locker of their choosing, where they can collect it.

“For 80 years, we have been trying not to distance ourselves from your needs, but [now] Tygodnik Powszechny has never been closer to its recipients,” wrote the magazine, noting that, on average, Poles live 450 metres from their nearest parcel locker.

InPost’s CEO, Rafał Brzoska, also celebrated the new partnership in a social media post, saying that his firm aims to roll out similar delivery services for magazines in other countries where it operates, which include the UK, France and Spain.

Tygodnik Powszechny hopes that the new delivery method can “revolutionise the press market” by offering a model for other traditional press publications, many of which have struggled in the internet era.

“Enabling readers to purchase the printed press through a nationwide network of parcel lockers will be a real market breakthrough, both for our publishing house and for the entire printed press market,” says the magazine’s CEO, Jacek Ślusarczyk.

According to industry news website Wirtualne Media, all major Polish news weeklies but one observed a decline in sales last year. In the fourth quarter of 2024, Tygodnik Powszechny had average weekly sales of 16,599 paper copies and 5,280 electronic copies. That was down 3.24% year-on-year.

The magazine, based in Kraków, presents a mix of commentary, analysis and opinion on political, social, historical and cultural issues, presented from a liberal Catholic perspective. Under Poland’s former communist regime, it often provided a forum for voices critical of the authorities.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Kgbo/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.