If I hear one more reporter blathering about “the death of junk mail,” I may have to be restrained.

It’s such an easy story to write and it makes for a nice tabloid headline.

But direct mail isn’t dying, at least not in the way that Geraldo Rivera and other media fops are predicting.

Exactly what shape is this medium in as we open this festive conference (the DMA’s fall event)?

Well, it’s hurting, but that started long before the onslaught of the anthrax war.

Yes, there have been anecdotal reports of declines in response, and we will probably hear more. But there is no evidence yet that Americans are refusing to open advertising mail (or any mail, for that matter).

However bad it gets, this scare will go away at some point, and then we will have to deal with a more elemental problem-that mailers are being hit with ever-increasing costs by a financially shaky postal service. And they have a host of other regulatory problems to deal with, some particular to paper mail, and some not.

Rest assured that if direct mail dies, it won’t be because of bin Laden.

If nothing else, these events may accelerate the use of e-mail. But e-mail grew out of paper direct mail, and shares many of its attributes, one being that its operators are a wily lot who measure everything.

Just know that Time Inc., Lillian Vernon and other mass mailers are not killing their paper mailings.

Junk mail lives.

If I hear one more reporter blathering about “the death of junk mail,” I may have to be restrained.

It’s such an easy story to write and it makes for a nice tabloid headline.

But junk mail isn’t dying, at least not in the way that Geraldo Rivera and other media fops are predicting.

Exactly what shape is this medium in as we open this festive conference?

Well, it’s hurting, but that started long before the onslaught of the anthrax war.

Yes, there have been anecdotal reports of declines in response, and we will probably hear more. But there is no evidence yet that Americans are refusing to open advertising mail (or any mail, for that matter).

However bad it gets, this scare will go away at some point, and then we will have to deal with a more elemental problem-that mailers are being hit with ever-increasing costs by a financially shaky postal service. And they have a host of other regulatory problems to deal with, some particular to paper mail, and some not.

Rest assured that if direct mail dies, it won’t be because of bin Laden.

If nothing else, these events may accelerate the use of e-mail. But e-mail grew out of paper direct mail, and shares many of its attributes, one being that its operators are a wily lot who measure everything.

Just know that Time Inc., Lillian Vernon and other mass mailers are not killing their paper mailings.

Junk mail lives.