Print is still the most effective platform for public notice but declining circulation and newspaper closures have put newspaper notice in peril. In 2025, two state press associations are promoting bills designed in part to avoid the kind of crises that erupted last year in Minnesota and New Jersey when newspaper chains in those states shuttered papers that had served as their communities’ only source of official notice.
One of the most far-reaching efforts to prepare for the future is being advanced by the Oklahoma Press Association. OPA supports two bills that together:
- Expand the number of papers eligible to publish official notice
- Ensure notices get widespread distribution on the internet
- Increase advertising rates for the first time since 2005
- Standardize design elements and publication schedules
House Bill 2166 would add Oklahoma to the relatively small group of states that don’t require official newspapers to possess a periodical permit. To qualify for official status, “non-periodical” newspapers must prove they have at least 200 paid mail subscribers and a minimum of 25 percent of their content must be the kind “generally found in local news publications.”
HB-2166 also requires official newspapers to publish notices in front of a paywall on their website, if they have one, and on OPA’s statewide public notice site. The bill additionally includes a unique mandate requiring newspapers to publish an ad in the public notice section of each issue promoting the availability of notices in the paper, on the paper’s website and on the OPA statewide site.
House Bill 2167 focuses primarily on fees, increasing rates by raising per-word and tabular-line charges between 42 percent and 57 percent. It also establishes a minimum type size and column width to help prevent the frustration clients experience when they place the same notice in multiple papers but are charged completely different rates, says OPA Executive Director Mark Thomas. Finally, HB-2167 contains provisions bringing conformity to publication schedules. One limits newspaper publication deadlines to five business days. The other requires newspapers that fail to run a notice in a timely manner to publish it for free in a future issue, in some circumstances.
Both bills easily passed out of committee last week and will make a stop in another committee before they can move to a vote on the House floor.
The Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association (PNA) is also preparing to back legislation that would modernize how official notice is distributed, says PNA President and CEO Bill Cotter. The bill will be sponsored by Rep. Robert Freeman, who issued a memo to House members last month seeking co-sponsors and providing an overview of how the bill will revise the state’s existing public notice law.
Freeman’s memo says his legislation will ensure municipalities and school districts always have a vehicle to publish official notice by establishing a process under which a print newspaper that closes would be replaced by its “digital descendant” or, if the paper is completely shuttered, by a free-circulation newspaper or online-only local news website.
“Print and free newspapers would also have to maintain a website and post public notices online contemporaneously and in front of a paywall … and on the statewide publicly accessible website maintained by the Pennsylvania News Media Association,” says the memo.
Cotter says Rep. Freeman is still working with PNMA and other supporters to help craft the bill. “Our goal will be to ensure that Pennsylvania residents are able to find their notices on every platform that newspapers publish on,” Cotter says.