On a December day in 2019, Alyssa Meier (pictured at left) was at work at The Leader-News in Washburn, N.D. when she received an email from a local bank announcing its intention to publish a public notice, but its subject had to be kept confidential.

Meier had seen plenty of public notices in her newspaper career, but never a secret one.

“We have a pretty good relationship with the bank, and they sent me a kind of bizarre email about a confidential legal, so I set up a phone call with the bank president right away,” Meier said in a telephone interview.

Jamie Nelson, the 40-year-old bank president in Washburn was filing notice of her application to the Federal Reserve to obtain a 55 percent share in the McLean Bank Holding Company, comprised of three banks – the Farmers Security Bank in Washburn, Garrison State Bank, and the Bank of Turtle Lake. All three banks are in McLean County, where The Leader-News is the designated newspaper to publish notices. Nelson asked Meier to keep the information confidential until after the notice ran.

Meier knew immediately it would be big news in the county.

“When you have entities that hold financial institutions in small towns, they have a lot of community involvement, and if they change hands, it can impact many people,” she said.

Meier wrote an article that would run as the lead story in The Leader-News and its two sister papers in McLean County on Dec. 26, 2019, one week after the public notice was published.

Meier’s coverage took the top spot in the Michael Kramer Public Notice Reporting Award in the 2021 National Newspaper Foundation’s Better Newspaper Contest. The judge commented that it was “interesting to get a public notice to generate a business and financial news story.”

McLean County sits near the center of North Dakota about 70 miles north of Bismarck, the state capital. Washburn, with a population of around 1,400, is the county seat. The Times-Leader is one of three small-town newspapers in McLean County, all owned by BHG, Inc., a small group of family-owned newspapers in west-central North Dakota. Meier is associate publisher.

The bank holding company’s transfer of ownership was 18 months in the making, with negotiations quietly taking place behind the scenes before Nelson told Meier about the public notice announcing her application to the Federal Reserve to take controlling interest.

“That legal was really the only clue that the transfer of shares was going to happen,” Meier said. “We were worried that meant they would be closing.”

According to Meier, the McLean Bank Holding Company has been a locally owned banking enterprise for more than 100 years, woven into the fabric of daily life and commerce in the communities it serves. Generations of customers have counted on it always being there.

“Banks like the Farmers Security Bank here in Washburn are important to communities like ours,” Meier said. “They serve local residents and small businesses, support student scholarships, sponsor activities, have floats in our parades, and they are good advertisers in the newspaper.”

Residents in the small towns across McLean County were anxious to see what the fallout would be after Nelson acquired the controlling shares, Meier said. But nearly two years after the transaction little has changed and all three banks are still operating as usual.

“Luckily, this was a good transition,” Meier added. “Jamie is local. She is raising her kids here, and so far, she has maintained her community involvement.”

Meier explained why she agreed with Nelson’s request to hold the story until after the notice was published.

“I’ve always appreciated local news because you have to look your sources and your readers in the eye, long after these stories are done,” she said. “If you can’t work with them, what you really lose is trust, which is huge, and I value long-term relationships over breaking news headlines.”

At BHG newspapers, public notices are important, not only as a major source of revenue but also as a way to keep readers informed, Meier said. The staff is trained to read ads and public notices to detect potentially newsworthy items.

“We need to pay attention to the little things and take advantage of the fact that legals are not only required in our newspapers, they also give us and the public a heads up when something important is happening,” Meier said.

Meier recently was elected to the North Dakota Newspaper Association Board of Directors.

Executive Director Sarah Elmquist Squires said, “Alyssa and The Leader-News are true leaders in public notice journalism. She understands the importance of sharing the way public notices work in her community, keeping people informed about crucial issues in business and local government.”

This marked the second year in a row that a North Dakota newspaper won the award. Last year, the Journal of Crosby took first place for reporter Brad Nygaard’s coverage of the local county commission’s intent to seek public input on a proposal to abolish electoral districts. In this year’s contest, the Journal won third place for its coverage of a proposal to locate a new Dollar General store in Crosby. The award went to Nygaard, Cecile Wehrman and Jacob Orledge. The judge remarked that the team’s coverage provided an “in-depth analysis of public notice and how it can impact the community.”

Second place in the 2021 contest went to prolific public notice reporter Jim Lockwood, a staff reporter with the Times-Tribune of Scranton, Pa. He won first place in 2015 and has placed second every year since then. As always, Lockwood’s entry included over a dozen news stories based on public notices, and included a cover letter in which he explained concisely how he does it: “I read public notices, daily, without fail; I report on the ‘fine print’ nature; and I reference the public notices in the resulting news articles.”

PNRC sponsors NNAF’s public notice reporting award and earlier this year named it in memory of tireless public notice advocate Michael Kramer (pictured at right), a former PNRC Board member and president of Law Bulletin Media in Chicago, who died on Dec. 7, 2020, after a battle with T-cell lymphoma. Kramer spent his life in the news publishing business and joined the Law Bulletin in 1997, rising to publisher in 2007 and company president in 2015. He was also a valued member of the Illinois Press Foundation Board of Directors for many years.