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
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.
Court invalidates election over public notice issue
In a unanimous decision this summer, the Oklahoma Supreme Court invalidated the results of a November 2022 lodging-tax election in McCurtain County for failure to follow statutory publication requirements.
Statute Title 19 O.S. 2021 §383 requires questions to the people “to be published at least four (4) weeks in some newspaper published in the county” if there is such a newspaper.
(This story was originally published in the July 2024 issue of The Oklahoma Publisher, the monthly newsletter of the Oklahoma Press Association. It is reprinted here courtesy of OPA.)