A New York Times story reports on a move by the Garden City, N.Y. village board to take public notices out of a local newspaper and start running them in a smaller competitor.

It’s the latest attempt by government officials to use economic pressure to try to sway coverage.

Meg Morgan Norris, editor and publisher of the 8,300-circulation Garden City News, has been critical of the village board’s handling of the redevelopment of a local landmark.

In addition to cutting the notices, the village board also has threatened to stop sending news items like calendar listings and senior columns to the News.

Norris’s brother points out in a recent column that their father, a longtime newspaper man, had been subject to the same tactics several decades earlier

“Then, as now, the major leverage applied by the politicians was based on legal advertising appearing in the papers, which was cut almost to zero,” wrote Bob Morgan Jr. “1974 was generally a pretty tough economic year, and our papers very much needed this revenue, but my father was absolutely resolute about not changing the editorial policy.”