By the Public Notice Resource Center
The newspaper industry that existed when public-notice laws were originally enacted is a thing of the past. There are fewer newspapers and they have less circulation. The papers are physically smaller and sometimes they’re designed, edited and/or printed at great geographical distances from the local markets in which they circulate. They’re also published electronically with a reach and immediacy that were unprecedented in the pre-internet era.
These changes have made it increasingly difficult for newspapers and government agencies to discharge their responsibilities under public-notice laws enacted many decades ago. As a result, state press associations otherwise reluctant to open up public-notice statutes to legislative meddling now may find it necessary to advocate changes to ensure relevancy of the laws that determine which papers qualify to publish the notices.
A Minnesota law that took effect Aug. 1 provides a model for press groups that may want to expand eligibility requirements.
Minnesota Newspaper Association Executive Director Lisa Hills says two developments convinced MNA it was time to modernize its public-notice statute. First, an association representing local government asked MNA for its help in meeting their members’ publishing requirements. The group emphasized it had no interest in engineering a wholesale shift of notices to government websites. Then a county experienced a temporary absence of any newspapers qualified to publish notices.
After drafting a list of possible revisions, MNA scheduled a series of public-notice webinars seeking feedback from members. “We got great participation from our members so they fully understood what we were hoping to achieve,” says Hills. MNA also sought input from local- government groups, who supported the new law and “appreciated that MNA took the initiative to update the law.”
The new law requires newspapers to publish notices on MNA’s statewide public-notice website and to include an index link to the public-notice section on their own website. It also simplified the law and aligned it to modern realities, allowing electronic editions to help meet print-publication frequency standards. It also replaced circulation minimums with a requirement that “a nominal percentage” of a paper’s print circulation must be distributed in “the area to which a public notice is directed, or where there is a reasonable likelihood that the person to whom it is directed will become aware of the notice.” It reduced the minimum printed space from 1,000 square inches to 800 and eliminated language that caused confusion over the definition of newspaper markets.
Other states have passed laws amending eligibility requirements for pubic notices. South Dakota authorized e-editions to satisfy print-publication frequency standards, but the only state we know that approved a bill liberalizing eligibility standards as comprehensively as Minnesota is Wisconsin.
Pursued aggressively by the Wisconsin Newspaper Association, 2021 Wisconsin Act 32 authorized digital subscribers to count towards statutory paid-circulation thresholds and allows free-circulation newspapers to publish notices in municipalities that don’t have a paid-circulation paper to handle the responsibility. Aside from not having to possess a valid periodical permit, free papers must meet all of the other statutory requirements. WNA Executive Director Beth Bennett says so far there are only two cities in Wisconsin where free-circulation papers distribute notices.
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