Models for the future of public notice?

State legislatures have grown increasingly comfortable with the concept of transitioning public notice from printed newspapers to their digital versions. Nine states considered legislation in 2023 allowing some or all notices published in newspapers to be posted instead on newspaper websites. Eight states — including four new ones — have considered similar or identical bills in 2024.

More evidence for the trend: Legislation allowing local news websites or “online-only newspapers” to serve as public notice alternatives to newspapers have been introduced in six states this year. Several other states have considered or passed bills authorizing newspapers’ e-editions to do the same.

Print will continue to play a major role in providing official notice for as long as sizable numbers of readers still use it to get their news. But the move to digital notice is likely to pick up steam in the coming years, so we thought it would be useful to highlight three recent bills approved respectively by officials in Louisiana, North Dakota and Virginia that may serve as models for other state legislatures in the years to come.

Louisiana House Bill 650Digital First

The most far reaching digital-notice initiative passed last year in Louisiana, the first and still-only state to mandate an eventual migration of local notices from print newspapers to newspaper websites. House Bill 650, which will move the state to digital-first notice in 2027, includes several notable features other states may find useful to consider if they decide to contemplate a similar change.

HB-650 maintains the state’s existing definition of an “official journal” and adds the requirement that to continue to qualify for that designation a newspaper must also have a website and post all of its notices there in addition to print. Official journals are still required to publish news of “general public interest” at not less than weekly intervals while providing “regular news coverage” of local meetings and events. In addition, they must continue to:

  • Contain no more than 75 percent advertising in more than half of their issues
  • Possess a U.S.P.S. periodical permit for at least five years before qualifying to publish official notice, and
  • Maintain “paid circulation to bona fide paying subscribers” as well as a “principal public business office” in the parish in which they publish notices

These requirements ensure print will play a continuing role in Louisiana even after public notice goes digital first in 2027. In fact, HB-650 requires official journals to begin publicizing the digital transition that year by running free pointer ads describing the subject matter of each online notice and directing readers to the location of the notice on their website or on the Louisiana Press Association’s (LPA) statewide public notice site, where it is also required to be published.

Finally, HB-650 simplifies the state’s complicated pricing structure by moving from agate lines and 100-word squares to standardized rates organized around text characters and a price-per-square-inch formula for display ads and other prebuilt notices. Although LPA expects the changes to eventually reduce public notice revenue for some of its members, it also anticipates that lower page counts will make up the difference for most papers by decreasing printing expenses.

North Dakota House Bill 1197E-Editions

In 2023, North Dakota became the first state to pass a law authorizing notices to be published in the e-edition of an official newspaper instead of its print edition. It’s a simple bill that defines an e-edition as “a digital facsimile of a newspaper print edition which is substantially the same in both format and content as the print edition.”

(That definition is identical to the one utilized in a bill passed the previous yearin the neighboring state of Minnesota. However, the Minnesota bill didn’t provide a digital-notice alternative; it was designed instead to expand eligibility standards by authorizing e-editions of a newspaper to meet publication-frequency mandates for official newspapers.)

Oregon and Indiana have also authorized e-editions to substitute for print newspapers in the public notice process.

Virginia Senate Bill 157Local News Websites

Legislation authorizing online-only news websites to publish notices as an option to local newspapers have floated around a few state legislatures since 2017. Proponents hadn’t made much progress until earlier this year, when Virginia SB-157 sailed through the legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Glenn Youngkin on April 2.

Fortunately, SB-157 — the first local-news-website legislation backed by a state press association — was by far the best version of this bill-type yet to be introduced and should be a starting point for other states considering a similar move. Most importantly, it guarantees online-only news publications that qualify to publish notices in Virginia will be local-news-focused organizations required to regularly report the size of their local audience in granular detail.

SB-157 includes many provisions that are by now standard in bills authorizing digital notice, including requirements that the website:

  • Be in business for at least two years prior to publishing notices
  • Regularly provide local news coverage
  • Make notices free of charge and accessible via search engine
  • Promote notices via a home page link to the site’s public notice section
  • Archive each notice for at least three years, and
  • Post notices on the state press association’s statewide public notice site

The bill also mandates several additional requirements, some of which are mirrored in the state’s existing statute authorizing newspapers without a periodical permit to publish notices. Those mandates require local news websites to:

  • Employ local news staff
  • Possess their own domain name
  • Publish exclusively online
  • Provide regularly updated general news coverage of the area, including reporting on government meetings, and
  • Make notices available as “an electronic equivalent of a tear sheet for affidavit purposes”

Local news websites that want to qualify to publish notices under SB-157 need to petition a circuit court for authorization and publish a notice in a local newspaper about its petition. In addition to proving it meets the requirements listed above, the website must submit to the court a 12-month audit of discrete users broken down by zip code or jurisdiction and “certified by an independent firm recognized in the online news industry as a web traffic auditor.”

Once the online-only news organization’s authority to publish notice has been granted, it must annually renew the authorization by submitting “a copy of web analytics showing discrete users by zip code or jurisdiction for the immediately preceding year” along with an affidavit certifying it still meets the other requirements mandated by statute. Every three years it must submit a new independent, certified audit of discrete users covering the three-year period since the previous audit was filed.

Every state is different, of course, and varying factors determine when a particular state needs to consider whether to adopt digital-notice alternatives to print newspapers. Those states that reach such a moment should begin by reviewing the new laws approved in Louisiana, North Dakota and Virginia, which they may find useful as starting points for their own legislation.