Author Archives: Diana Davis

State-agency website bills dead in three states

Legislation requiring state agencies to publish official notice on their websites was killed last week in committees in Indiana, Georgia and West Virginia.

After passing the House last month by a comfortable margin, Indiana HB-1312 was defeated in a Senate committee by a vote of 8-2. The bill allowed every public notice in the state to eventually be posted on a state-agency website. It was rejected a week after the Hoosier State Press Association (HSPA) organized a statehouse rally at which “more than 100 Indiana publishers, editors, reporters and subscribers gathered outside the Senate chambers” to oppose the bill, according to Johnston County’s Daily Journal.

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Press association websites essential for survival of newspaper notice

Legislation designed to move all official notice to a single state-agency website has been introduced this year in Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, New Jersey and West Virginia. The bills in Indiana, Georgia and West Virginia are already dead (see story above) and those in Idaho and New Jersey appear unlikely to pass.

But these types of bills probably pose the most serious long-term threat facing newspaper notice. They are fully subsidized by taxpayers and force newspapers to compete with the most well-resourced organization in every state: The executive branch of the state government.

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PNRC and ACCN announce management change

The boards of directors of the Public Notice Resource Center (PNRC) and American Court and Commercial Newspapers (ACCN) announced last month that they have selected the Michigan Press Association (MPA) to manage the joint affairs of the two groups when the contract with their current management company ends on April 2.

PNRC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that promotes government and corporate transparency through research and education focused on how to provide effective official notice to the public. It is the only national organization that monitors and analyzes public notice legislation in all 50 states. ACCN is a trade association that represents local newspapers that report on and provide services to the legal and business communities in which they operate.

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Three states edge closer to government website notice

Legislation that would move all or most public notice in three states to government websites passed significant milestones last month. Bills in Indiana and Kentucky were approved by the Houses of Representatives in those states by comfortable margins, while another in Idaho’s lower chamber barely squeaked by.

The most significant threat to newspaper notice appears to be the assault launched in Indiana, where HB-1312 would eventually allow all public and private notices in the state to be posted on a website established by the Indiana Office of Technology (IOT). It passed the House on Feb. 18 by a 57-36 vote.

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Two state press groups prepare for future

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
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N.J. press group backs extraordinary public notice measures

When we last reported on New Jersey, the state faced a public notice crisis triggered by the news that the Newhouse media empire’s Star-Ledger, the state’s largest and most significant newspaper, planned to shutter its print edition on Feb. 1, along with a sister publication and several affiliated newspapers. The state legislature temporarily suspended the crisis on the final day of 2024, when it enacted AB-5151, giving itself two months to amend the Garden State’s public notice laws and come up with a solution.

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Legislative floodgates open

Every January, we are inundated with a firehose of public notice bills gushing from legislatures ranging from Connecticut to California and most states in-between. This year has been no different. PNRC is now following 83 separate pieces of legislation which almost certainly doesn’t include many other most-likely minor bills we haven’t been able to catch up with yet.

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Alaska newspapers form coalition; public notice looms large on agenda

When 2024 began, Alaska may have been the only state in the U.S. where newspapers lacked any semblance of an organized effort to protect their interests. That ended early last year when a group of newspaper supporters established the Alaska News Coalition (ANC) under the auspices of the Juneau Community Foundation.

One year later the group has made tremendous progress, establishing a governing body and attracting the initial funding that will allow it to begin representing newspapers in the state in earnest. The protection of public notice is at the top of its to-do list.

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Local website owner argues competitor should be allowed to continue to publish notices

In an email sent to PNRC on Dec. 3, Kansas Press Association Executive Director Emily Bradbury reported the following story:

“We have a kiddo in Kansas who started a competing online newspaper (The Hutchinson Tribune) against a Gannett newspaper (The Hutchinson News).

He is 17 years old.

Tonight, for the second time, he went before the Hutchinson City Council to argue to keep printed public notices in the Hutchinson News — his competitor. He won the fight for Gannett. Amazing.

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Newspaper closures muddle future of notice in New Jersey

The status of newspaper notice in New Jersey was thrown into uncertainty when Advance Publications announced on Oct. 30 that early next year it plans to close a production facility and the print editions of several significant newspapers in the state, including the state’s largest paper, the Star-Ledger.

Although it isn’t clear how many local government units were using the three daily papers and one weekly newspaper that will cease publication in the wake of Advance’s announcement, the scale of the closure’s impact began to come into focus when rural Warren County filed a lawsuit seeking a new outlet for its notices. Warren County has been publishing its notices in the Star-Ledger even though the paper is based in Newark, which is located two counties and 63 miles from the county seat.

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