By Darren Johnson
Campus News
I’m on some New York newspaper email lists, and yesterday got word that state publishers are in a tizzy because New Jersey recently passed a law ending the requirement that legal notices be published in newspapers there. New York publishers worry the same will now happen here.
In case you didn’t know, legal notices are these things you see in the paper.
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Municipalities and other such legal entities, in our state and most others, are required to place such ads in a paper of record whenever they do anything legal that the public needs to know about.
We get some in a rural paper I own called The Journal & Press. I don’t charge much for them; about 5 cents a word. If they are short enough, I don’t even bill the person. It’s not worth my time and the cost of a stamp. Most other papers charge more. It’s actually quite expensive to place one in the typical daily paper.
For municipal ads, these are paid for by the villages, towns, counties, etc., via their general funds (raised through taxes). As the local TV investigative guy says: “You paid for it!”
Because The Journal & Press is not a true weekly newspaper, we don’t get some local legal postings; I guess out of political expedience. Instead, they are placed in papers fewer people actually read.
People have suggested that if I made the paper a true weekly again, the extra amount of money I’d make in legal ad revenue would pay the print bill.
But I see legal ads as a way for government to potentially coerce the media. Many weekly papers seem to only exist for the legal ad revue. I’d venture to say The Post-Star would have stopped printing years ago if not for the legal ads plus the large amount they charge for obituaries.
So these papers hang on as zombie newspapers. There’s a paper to the south of us that seems to have no real thoughts in its pages; just re-purposed press releases and lots of legal ads, because it’s in a more prosperous county than us and prosperous counties have more legally binding stuff happening. People starting LLCs and applying for liquor licenses, for example.
Perhaps if New York pulls the legal ad requirement from newspapers, they will be forced to innovate, or die.
Maybe legal ad revenue is holding small newspapers back. They don’t sayanything critical in their pages, for fear of losing the funding?
I wouldn’t be heartbroken if New York State followed New Jersey’s lead on this issue.
Darren Johnson is a full-time college Journalism instructor who puts his money where his mouth is, publishing Campus News and two rural newspapers in print form. Contact him at editor@cccnews.info.
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