In a kind of follow-up to a previous story he reported 10 years ago on government subsidies for newspapers, former newspaper editor David Westphal took a close look earlier this month for the Poynter Institute at the state of public notice.
Although we’re never happy when public notice is framed as a government subsidy, as opposed to payment for service rendered, we concede reasonable people may disagree on that point. We also know from working with him as a source on the story that Westphal takes his responsibility to report the issue fairly and accurately quite seriously. Few journalists have covered public notice with more insight and intelligence than Westphal brings to this story.
CJR Piece on Public Notice Badly Misinformed
In a recent article in Columbia Journalism Review, Liena Zagare and Ben Smith argue that local governments should move public notice and other civic advertising from newspapers to local-news websites like Zagare’s BKLYNER.
To buttress their case, they claim that a newspaper in their borough, the Brooklyn Eagle, recently had “three of its 12 pages entirely covered” by advertising designed to “make sure taxpayers see how their money is being spent, and to prevent officials from hiding corrupt deals.” But those three pages of advertising in the Eagle were placed by law firms, not public officials. And its purpose was to provide official notice of courtroom process, not public spending. That’s a pretty glaring mistake. Surely, CJR would want to correct the record, right?