After more than 57 years in print, the Los Alamos Monitor published its final issue on Sunday. When early last week it announced the decision to close, the New Mexico paper blamed its financial woes “in part to an unusual decision by local government to send its legal advertising to a free newspaper competitor at an apparent higher cost to taxpayers.”
The Monitor isn’t the only paper that has come to rely on revenue from public notice advertising for stability. As other forms of advertising have declined, the financial significance of newspaper notice has grown.
Is this an issue publishers should raise when policymakers threaten to move notice out of newspapers and onto government websites?
Industry advocates agree that in the legislative arena our focus should remain on explaining why newspapers are still the best vehicle for official notice. But times have changed and the informal prohibition against discussing the role public notice plays in shoring up newspaper balance sheets isn’t as strong as it used to be.
That’s largely due to two factors. First, it’s now widely understood that many newspapers are struggling financially; we’re not fooling anyone by not discussing it. Second, “government support” is no longer a pejorative term.
Since the pandemic began, the federal government has authorized extraordinary levels of fiscal stimulus to support private businesses. And the national trade organizations for the newspaper business have taken the unprecedented step of lobbying for federal assistance for their members. And if that wasn’t enough evidence that it’s a new world we live in, a bill was introduced last month in the California legislature that would make it official state policy to protect newspapers from ruin. The preamble of Assembly Bill 323, which would give the industry a year before having to comply with the state’s new gig-worker law, includes the following language:
“Without relief, decreased revenue combined with increased costs is a potentially devastating blow for (the newspaper) industry. … It is the declared policy of the Legislature that the state should assist and protect, to the maximum extent possible, journalism and the ability of local news organizations to continue to provide readers with important information about news and events in their communities.”
As a tactical matter, raising the specter of financial catastrophe worked spectacularly well in New Jersey in late 2016, when Republican Governor Chris Christie and both leaders of the New Jersey’s Democratic-controlled legislature introduced a bill to move all public notice in the state to government websites. The bill was front-page news for several days in the state’s largest newspapers and on their websites, with extensive coverage of the devastating financial impact it would have on newspapers and local journalism if it passed. The wall-to-wall coverage unleashed a wave of grassroots opposition and against all odds the bill was dead within a week.
But what happened a few years ago in New Jersey was set in motion by a number of unique factors unlikely to be duplicated again. Nevertheless, state press groups have grown less reluctant to address the revenue issue in their lobbying efforts.
“It’s not the issue we lead with, but I’m a big believer of talking about the elephant in the room,” says Rebecca Snyder, executive director of the Maryland-Delaware-DC Press Association, who acknowledges it’s not always up to us when to raise the issue. “The opposition talks about it all the time so the topic is often difficult to avoid.”
A newspaper industry representative in Florida says framing the issue properly is key. “It’s not a ‘subsidy'”, he says. “It’s a service, just like any other service the government spends money on.”
The latest version of the talking points the Florida Press Association distributes to its members argues that moving notices to government websites would place an undue financial strain on smaller papers. “These papers will be severely impacted by downsizing reporters and personnel even though they are providing important services to local officials and citizens,” say the talking points. “Some will go out of business and the replacement will be local government personnel.”
Snyder agrees it helps to localize the issue. “We’re honest about the fact that revenue from notices helps to fund local news gathering,” she says.
President and CEO Sam Fisher makes an important distinction between public and individual advocacy. He says public testimony should focus on why newspapers are better at providing public notice than government websites. “We’re better served talking about lost revenue individually with legislators. It’s an issue that’s more relevant for a discussion between the publisher and the local elected official, which is where the heavy lifting gets done,” he argues.
Mississippi Press Association Executive Director Layne Bruce says he will sometimes let a legislator know when a potential vote could hurt their local paper. “It doesn’t do anybody any good not to have a functioning paper in town,” Bruce says. “And nine times out of ten, local politicians here have a non-adversarial relationship with their local paper so that message resonates.”
There’s no one-size-fits all approach in the battle to protect effective public notice. Legislative strategy is dictated by local political concerns and varies by state.
In general, when we argue against moving public notice to government websites, our emphasis should remain on why newspapers are still the best vehicle for official notice. Most legislators haven’t given the issue much thought and are persuadable, and the evidence in support of newspaper notice is overwhelming. (PNRC’s “Public Notice: An American Tradition” contains a handy summary of that evidence.)
But if losing public notice revenue would force you to cut jobs or close your paper, let your local legislative representatives know so they have a full understanding of the issue and the impact it will have in your community.