Editorial “A gov’t takeover of legal notices” observes: “Sad to say, many legislators are still peeved, almost vindicative one might suspect, at the citizens uproar that greeted news reports of their 2005 pay raise and led to its cancellation. … So when school and local governments groups asked Rep. Creighton – he’s chairman of the House Local Government Committee – to halt independent public advertising of community issues and give them control of the public information business, he consented….
“Surveys show 40 percent of Pennsylvanians do not have Web access….”
WATCHDOG: The local governments understandably want to cut back on having to pay the exorbitant price that newspapers charge for legal advertisements. On the other hand, the newspapers make good points in the article, including how legal advertisements on municipal web sites would hardly be noticed by the public.
However, they do not indicate what percentage of the citizenry read the newspapers and, of them, how many look at legal notices.
Whatever, the obvious approach is to have a single state wide site for legal notices from all governmental bodies. Law firms, activists, companies, and persons with of special interests will know where to check. It seems unlikely that persons without Web site access are likely to read the legal advertisements in the newspapers anyway. And if legal notices are posted of public interest, the newspapers can report on them. Local and state news is primarily what we buy them for, isn’t it?
As example when a father wants to correct his child’s name because the mother listed it wrong on the birth certificate – the charges are hundreds and hundreds of dollars to advertise this simple change. I have personally witnessed this precluding action being taken.
It is major cash to papers for nothing. Applaud helping citizens and not the papers.
Alternatively, newspapers could make a certain number of the advertisements free. It’s content that makes the paper useful to people, and thus attracts readers.
It should be free, and if they were smart they’d turn free into revenue.