Dear newspaper publishers: About those legal notices

Yes, I know many of the reasons state legislatures continue to entertain, and to sometimes pass, laws allowing local governments to avoid posting legal notices in their newspapers of record are far less than pristine. In many cases, the local governments as well as the legiscritters are perfectly fine with hiding away such information.

(Then you have schizophrenic, in its non-technical, "split personality" use, bodies like the Texas Legislature. Here in Tex-ass, the Lege will entertain, every other year, in our banana republic not-every-year body, bills to kill public notice. UNLESS it's for setting local tax rates. In that case, the Lege has EXPANDED public notice requirements over the last decade. They call it "truth in taxation," but what it really is, is trying to egg on local wingnuts to file rollback elections and other stuff.)

But, I digress.

With fewer and fewer people reading print newspapers, local governments argue back, "why should we have to pay for print notifications?" Some would just want to post it on their city, county, or school district websites (and probably eighty-six it if they could). Others, more honestly, would argue that posting on a website for a newspaper meets requirements of getting out of local government, while still saving money and potentially addressing more people.

That argument's not all wrong.

And, some local governments might argue that their local publisher wants to nickel and dime them, or even gouge them.

And, THAT argument's not all wrong.

I've seen one arguable "gouging" and a couple of "nickel and dimings."

As newspaper budgets and revenue for many of them get tighter, publishers are going to more and more start running the risk of clutching the public notice brood of eggs so tightly that they smash it.