A similar situation is going on in NY where companies that form LLCs must pay up to $1,000 to publish their formation notice in newspapers. Many of the LLCs are small business owners who would like less expensive alternatives such as the Internet. In most areas including rural areas, internet penetration is greater than the paid newspaper penetration. There is a site called http://legal-notice.org that is proactively doing something about it. They are publishing all LLC notices for free online. While the current law still requires publication in newspapers, it’s great to see how easy the “new world” will be as soon as the law catches up with technology.
In response to the “fox guarding the hen-house” argument of government run web sites. Why not replace expensive newspaper requirements with “designated” publication sites like http://legal-notice.org approved but not run by the government?

The government issue is absolutely relevant as well. I note that in the piece. There’s a slippery slope concern here.

What I’m arguing against is the *way* some folks are positioning this. Quippy soundbites about electricity and henhouses sound clever, but they don’t overcome some pretty big detriments: public notices seem outdated because in many respects they are outdated. They’re printed in very small type. They’re relegated to deep, dark sections of the newspaper. There’s a couple strikes already against them, yet some of the people defending them — people with legitimate arguments — rely on messaging that’s hard to stomach. I think that’s counterproductive.

Fear mongering obscures reasonable points. As I noted in the piece, Rush didn’t resort to that kind of thing and I found the arguments she made quite sound. That’s what’s unfortunate here. The bombast doesn’t further the dialogue.

One question — and this came up as I was working on this piece as well — what software package (or packages) are you referring to? I’m assuming Acrobat, but I really don’t know.

1. In recent years, the same legislature that wanted to take public notices out of newspapers (usually because some legislator was mad at his or her newspaper over news coverage, or prompted by local public officials mad at the newspaper), very often proposed bills on a variety of new programs which also included a public-notice provision to ensure awareness and public accountability. While newspapers might understandably be interested in protecting their public-notice revenue stream, my experience, and a reading of history, I believe, will show that legislators themselves proposed public notices for very good reasons.

2. The small type that critics use against the newspaper industry is also often proscribed by legislation.

3. I can assure you that other than exceptional years for some major power company public filing or heavy election years, that legals do NOT provide more than 1% of the income for most community newspapers.

4. Newspapers are a good vehicle because they are available to subscribers and single-copy purchasers to see as they page through a newspaper. The idea that people would spend time searching for public notices online, other perhaps bidders for contracts, is specious at best.

The Iowa Press Association estimated the Iowa total at one-20th of 1 percent of local government spending. Extrapolated nationally, that would be just shy of $1 billion, as we noted in our report.

But this doesn’t include either federal or state public notices. (Did anyone see yesterday’s Wall Street Journal? More than 4 pages of public notices notices paid for by the federal government.) It also doesn’t include the entirely separate category of notices the government requires of the private sector. When we were in Washington last week, virtually the entire Post classified section we picked up was bank-paid foreclosure notices required by the state of Virginia.

On the merits, I think newspapers have strong arguments right now that Web-posting on a government page would drastically reduce the public’s exposure to these announcements. This is an issue that’s worthy of a full public airing, given the importance of public notices throughout American history and, I believe, the critical role they’ve played in setting a standard of openness.

Even so, it’s clear where this is going longer term. Notices will eventually end up on the Web and this great revenue stream for newspapers will shrink significantly.

Note that this would also prevent undetectable changes by the government. The signing time stamp would no longer match the purported date of the story.

In my opinion, *all* news publication should be cryptographically time stamped. It’s not very hard, and completely prevents a hacker from undetectably changing the story. It also keeps the publisher honest, since they have to admit to any story changes after publication.

The issue of cost to the municipalities is nontrivial, too. Beyond Sam’s first point about the amount of absolute dollars spent by towns and counties, consider the compliance costs: the laws requiring that public notices appear in newspapers have convoluted, difficult-to-comply with provisions that assure that every publisher gets his finger in the pot.

Speaking as the CEO of a company that has been asked again and again by our state and municipal clients if we can handle their public postings for them, I can say that there are businesses that could do this cheaper, better and with none of the conflicts of interest that the newspaper lobbyist fears. Even better, we could even syndicate the postings back to the newspapers in easy-to-publish formats that would still allow them to report it to their audiences–if they thought that the news was worth more than the money they took to print it in the first place.

1) The issue of money: I get that newspapers are searching for sustainable revenue streams and fighting tooth and nail to maintain existing streams.

But newspapers also purportedly serve the public interest. And the public interest is to make sure government is operating as effectively and efficiently as possible. If that interest means governments should have the option of whether to post in print or online, they should have that option.

And it’s hogwash that the money doesn’t matter to either the government or the media company seeking the ability to run public notices. If you’ve got a town of 5,000 people, the municipal budget might stand around $4 million – two percent of that is $80,000. Even a town with a $1 million budget might spend at least $10,000 annually in public notices, according to Tonda’s figures.

That $80,000 (or even $10,000) is a significant amount for both the government and the media company.

3) On the issue of you can’t trust the man: This is significantly more complicated than just pointing out who does what. It’s an issue of influence.

What influence does the government have over a “independent” publication that might live and die on that $80,000 in revenue from public notices? Is that publication going to tread carefully on governmental issues to avoid jeopardizing that contract and thus, its existence?

Anecdotally, I’ve seen instances where the government just avoids the issue altogether and has one of its cronies create a print publication and sends all the public notices there.

All of these points, and the points made in the piece, don’t point to having public notices in just print or just online.

What it points to is that local governments should have the option.

But press associations across the country don’t seem to keen on even allowing the option to be available.

And not having the option is something the public should notice.

The second argument pretty much ignores every technological innovation that’s come down the pike since about 1995.

The third argument is, to be blunt, insane.

Our industry is in enough trouble as it is. Now we’re going to ask the government to help us out by continuing to do things in a backwards way that doesn’t serve the public? Great plan!