House Bill 368, sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, and awaiting action in the Senate, would allow local governments and others to remove legal notices from newspapers and place them on government websites. These are things like notices of meetings, proposed ordinances, master commissioner sales, estate filings, utility rate increases. (Getty Images)
Community journalists across Kentucky are raising alarms about House Bill 368, which would end a requirement to publish legal notices in local newspapers. The measure cleared the Kentucky House 62-30 on Feb. 26.
Jane Ashley Pace, immediate past president of the Kentucky Press Association and publisher of The Oldham Era and the Henry County Local, recently wrote that HB 368 would decrease government transparency and could cost some smaller, rural counties their local newspaper.
The following is an edited version of a column published in the Woodford Sun written by Sun managing editor Scott White.
Just when you think things are turning around. . . .
The Kentucky General Assembly is considering House Bill 368, which, if passed into law, would pose a very real threat to the Woodford Sun’s ability to stay open. Let me explain.
As many of you know from prior columns, we here at the Sun have been laser-focused on saving this county’s 156-year-old voice from extinction. This is not crying wolf — community newspapers in Kentucky and around the country have been failing at a steady rate.
The Sun has not turned a profit since 2015. We are a bare bones staff. Even so, our publisher Ben Chandler is committed to keeping this newspaper locally owned, locally focused and open. We are the sole source of Woodford County hard news, features, community doings, local sports and you name it. Everything we print is relevant to anyone living or doing business in or enjoying Woodford County.
Even being small, I am pretty proud of the job we do, and based on what many of you call, text or email me or stop and tell me, most folks agree.
I can’t tell you how many folks have stopped me to say, “You guys can do it, we need the Sun. Don’t sell or close. The Sun is indispensable.”
Many of you have renewed for two years. Many seniors ignore the discount price and pay the full amount. Some of you have increased the number of times you advertise — or increased the number of times you run an ad.
Thank you.
And, according to data from the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, there are a lot of you out there supporting the Sun.
The institute reports out of 120 community newspapers in Kentucky, we are 30th in community penetration at 29% — which represents the percentage of residents who read our paper. This is calculated by totaling the average in-county mail and single-copy sales numbers on our annual postal statement and dividing that total by the number of housing units, a datum that is updated annually by the Bureau of the Census. This means a third of this county’s population regularly reads the Sun.
And though our advertising revenues are not what they were even five years ago, they are improving. You accepted without complaint an increase in the cost from 75 cents to a dollar. Subscriptions, both new and renewals, are up.
Now, about HB 368.
HB 368, sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, and awaiting action in the Senate, would allow local governments and others to remove legal notices from newspapers and place them on government websites. These are things like notices of meetings, proposed ordinances, master commissioner sales, estate filings, utility rate increases; just turn to our classified page and you will see some.
We don’t make a ton of money off of these, but this does account for a portion of our revenue. The possible loss of this, now, is a real threat, and we are nearly there. Sadly, many of our colleagues around the state are in even worse shape, where the loss of this revenue would put them out of business.
Though I get and hear the criticisms of the media, the reality is do you really want to live in a country without a free and independent press? Let me be more specific. Should residents of Letcher County have to live without the award-winning Mountain Eagle? Or, Georgetown without the News-Graphic? Or, Frankfort without the State Journal? Or, Versailles and Midway without the Woodford Sun?
That said, it’s important to also remember there are public policy reasons with roots in the free press provisions of the federal and Kentucky constitutions for governments to be required to publish certain matters in the newspaper and not just on government websites. Placing legal notices in newspapers increases transparency, holds public officials accountable, and decreases the risk of mischief by those officials and bureaucrats.
When a legal ad is placed in a newspaper, it is placed in the local newspaper, it is dated, and cannot be changed after the fact. In addition, it is placed on a website managed by the Kentucky Press Association where all legal notices in Kentucky can be found easily at kypublicnotices.com. When the Sun publishes a legal notice, it is in the paper, on our website and on the digital paper.
HB 368 seeks to have entities including county and city governments place public notices on their own websites, yet many have only one employee, if any, and often can’t keep their current websites updated.
As good as the new sites run by the City of Versailles and Woodford County are, they are managed by just one or maybe two employees who have myriad other responsibilities. Is it reasonable to expect a local government, even as good and responsible as we have, to make sure required legal notices are posted and maintained in a timely fashion? Given the risk of mischief, is it worth it?
I suspect some of you know who Al Cross is; he made his name as both a state government reporter for the Courier-Journal where he became a columnist and then as the executive director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, from where he just recently retired. Al is also considered one of the most informed, keen and prescient observers of Kentucky politics and is a regular on KET’s election night coverage. Al is also a good friend of mine and Ben’s, a very good friend and subscriber of the Sun, and someone whom I regularly solicit for his views and thoughts on how we operate.
Here is what Al recently emailed me about HB 368, “All in all, (last week’s edition of the Sun) was a newspaper that could be an excellent vest-pocket argument against HB 368, which would lead to the death of some Kentucky newspapers by allowing local governments to post public notices on their websites instead of local newspapers — which once got maybe 7 (percent) to 8 percent of their revenue from public notices but are now likely in the neighborhood of 20 percent.”
Well, we aren’t 20%, but it’s north of 7%.