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.
Newspapers battle in 2 states over right to publish notices
Most states require newspapers to have paying subscribers to publish notices but at least a few grant that authority to free-distribution papers as well. Those requirements don’t change very often which is why it’s so unusual to have two states considering legislation this year that would allow free papers to publish notices.
The newspapers supporting the measures in both states were founded by entrepreneurs in communities where the paid-circulation newspapers have experienced multiple rounds of layoffs and cutbacks in recent years. Taking the other side of the debate are the states’ press associations, both of which oppose the bills.
Local officials use public notice as tool of vengeance
After 30 years of serving as the official newspaper in Gardner, Kansas, the local paper is calling foul following the town’s decision to pull its public notices and place them in another publication with no print circulation in Gardner.
“The council members are trying to punish me because they don’t like the way I have been covering the city,” said Rhonda Humble, owner and publisher of The Gardner News. “They are trying to shut me up.”
The Year in Public Notice Legislation
Despite a bit of early angst in a few states, 2018 ended up being a relatively benign year for public notice.
PNRC has tracked about 160 separate public notice bills this year, just a bit more than in 2017. Only 24 were enacted into law and most were vanishingly minor. As is generally the case with minor public notice legislation, almost all of the notice changes were incidental to the primary focus of the legislation. For example, a bill in New Jersey added several new instances of both newspaper and government website notice in connection with public-private partnership agreements for certain building and highway infrastructure projects.
Christie’s Effort to Eliminate Newspaper Notice in NJ Stalls
It isn’t unusual for politicians seeking revenge for negative press coverage to retaliate by sponsoring legislation that would eliminate public notice advertising in newspapers. It is unprecedented, however, for the press to openly acknowledge the lawmaker’s intentions and to dub the legislation a “newspaper revenge bill.”
Such is the bruising nature of politics in New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie’s effort to move all public notices in the state to government websites was withdrawn from consideration on Monday afternoon. But the newspaper industry isn’t out of the woods yet. The bill remains active and Christie has vowed to make it his “top priority” in 2017. The speaker of the General Assembly has also announced his intention to return to the issue “very soon.”