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« Closing Credits for Franklin Cinema? | Main | Junk Store Angel » June 8, 2006Public NoticeThursday's Nashville City Paper has a rather silly - and wrong - editorial about government compliance with "public notice" requirements. The editorial stems from the ACLU's attempt to prevent Tennessee voters from voting on a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would define marriage as consisting of one man and one woman. The City Paper says: The ACLU and the State of Tennessee argued in essence about what constitutes proper public notice in our state when governmental action is concerned. The ACLU argued the state did not provide adequate notice under the law of a referendum to ban gay marriage by advertising the matter in newspapers for what they say is the required six month window. The state argued back that the law simply says "notice" must be given, noting the legislation was available at the state's website and through news reports.The editorial is the City Paper's self-serving attempt to protect a source of ad revenue - local government paying to run public notices. Frist of all, Internet access is no longer a "luxury still afforded by a minority of Americans." According to Harris Interactive, 77 percent of U.S. adults have access to the Internet - 172 million people. And a fast-growing number of online Americans are accessing the Internet over a high-speed or "broadband" connection, according to Pew Research, with broadband usage increasing across all income demographics:
As for cable TV, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association says that 65.5 million American households have basic cable, nearly 60 percent of the 110.6 million households that have TV at all. And cable service is physically available to 111.3 million homes. The Newspaper Association of America, meanwhile, reports that newspapers nationally have about 66.2 million subscribers. Instead of fighting to protect a revenue source, the City Paper ought to use its editorial page to urge government to use modern technologies and information outlets - from newspapers to TV to the Internet and blogs - to communicate with the people. The "public notice" needs of the people are ill-served if they are met only by the government placing one of those hard-to-read tiny-type "public notices" in the back of a newspaper where few people will ever see it. Posted in Tennessee Government News
Comments
Your facts about Internet access may be true, but the law is the law. I suppose "loose interpretation" of the law by judges is OK ? so long as they rule for the hate-mongerers. Posted by: Gus at June 8, 2006 5:51 PMI have to wholeheartedly disagree with the sentiment that newspapers are no longer the best way to communicate public information to citizens. Newspapers have had more than 200 years of practice in the public notice field and are still the experts. I represent the Public Notice Resource Center, a non-partisan nonprofit dedicated to studying public notices in America. Extensive research of public notices clearly show newspapers to be the most effective medium for carrying public notices. Newspapers - in print or online - have an established ability to independently authenticate, make accessible, and to provide an accurate historical record of the notice. The facts of the Tennessee case are simple. The state constitution requires the publication of a public notice six months prior to a general election. The state published the amendment just four and a half months prior. It is hard to justify making new constitutional rules when the ones on the book are flagrantly violated. The state argues that they "published" the amendment by having it up on their website under the bills section. Do you really feel you are being notified if you have to go the legislature's website, find the bills section, run a search and then read through pages of results to find the particular measure you are looking for? Citizens deserve better and that's why notices have traditionally been published in newspapers. Newspapers don't go down when there is high traffic, and they don't lose information when hackers toy with their sites. Newspapers are tangible and available to pass along to every citizen. Be it through subscriptions, archives or libraries, if you need to find something that was printed in a newspaper, it's always available. Furthermore, most newspapers, such as the Nashville City Paper, have notices on their websites, giving citizens a choice of how to receive this information. Most importantly, newspapers provide the independent verification that is needed. One thing I think we can agree on is that governments shouldn't be trusted to be their own watchdogs. Newspapers provide that watchdog ability. If the government publishes the wrong information, they have to answer for it. When they post it on their own websites, they can surreptitiously "correct" information without anyone knowing. Newspapers have been in the business of public notices for a long time and provide a service both to the community and the government. The service they provide is no more expensive (and often cheaper) than the same service of classified advertisements they print for the average citizens. Newspapers are expert contractors, no different than a construction company hired by the state to build a public artifice. The Tennessee Constitution requires the publication of amendments and that is no mistake. The authors of the constitution understood how important it is to keep the public informed of the government's actions. The only mistake is allowing legislatures to rewrite the rules after the fact. Posted by: Matthew Erwin at June 12, 2006 3:26 PMVery well articulated counter-point, Matthew, thank you. Does the TN Constitution require the state to publish a proposed amendment in a paid public notice? Or is the requirement satisfied if the proposed amendment if the public is notified of it via massive news coverage, publication online, etc? You wrote, Matthew, that "Newspapers have been in the business of public notices for a long time." Well, you right that newspapers treat public notices as a BUSINESS, but I see nothing in the state constitution that requires the state to publish a paid ad to satisfy the six-month requirement. The newspaper industry cleverly turned the constitutional requirement of "public notice" into a way to make money, but clearly in the case of the proposed amendment that has the ACLU in court, the public was very well notified of the amendment and its contents more than six months in advance. The paid "public notice" in a dead-tree publication is going to go the way of the buggy whip, as more and more citizens get their news online and via RSS readers. Those won't generate newspapers money, however, or at least as much, and so they will fight the change and claim that the "public notice" requirement means a PAID public notice, though it really doesn't mean that at all. Posted by: Bill Hobbs at June 12, 2006 7:26 PMThank you for the response, Bill. As you point out, some of the difficulty with this issue comes from the fact that the Constitution states only that notice must be "published." That is unfortunately vague. What we do have to go on in this case is tradition and other laws within the state and throughout the country. A large majority of states require any proposed amendments to a constitution to be published in newspapers of general circulation. Dozens of other laws and regulations in Tennessee require public notices to be published in newspapers of general circulation. Furthermore, the state sets forth exactly what rate is to be paid for such notices (the lowest classified rate). I feel I must respond to your mention of RSS. I embrace technology and the blog for the Public Notice Resource Center is RSS enabled (www.pnrc.net/blog). However, for the most part, people still don?t know what RSS is. While it is a nice feature for the tech savvy, most people only have a passing understanding of internet technology, let alone information syndication services. According to Ipsos, only 12% of internet users know what RSS is and only 4% actually use RSS on a regular basis. The technology just hasn?t taken with the general population yet (http://publisher.yahoo.com/rss/RSS_whitePaper1004.pdf). This is not a print vs. online debate. In my previous post, I mentioned that many newspapers put their notices online. In fact some newspapers will even deliver new public notices to your email inbox every morning. The amendment case is also not an issue of money. The money received by newspapers from the amendment process (just two classified advertisements in two years) is not significant. The crux of the entire argument is the independence of the publisher. The simple fact is that you cannot give the government blanket trust to always do its best to notify the public. Newspapers are independent contractors; there is nothing to gain by publishing incorrect information. Nor do they have anything to gain by withholding embarrassing information. Rather, newspapers have a public duty and a financial interest in making sure that all required information is published correctly and in a timely manner. Furthermore, newspapers are required to file affidavits, proving that notices are run at the correct time with all the required information. This process serves as a final check to make sure the public is properly notified. Government websites provide none of these services. Currently, we are following two eminent domain cases where insufficient notice allowed eminent domain to plans proceed without the affected landowners knowing meetings were taking place, and thus without input from those whose property was being taken. Those are just two more examples of the importance of newspapers. When changes are proposed for a community, people expect to read about them in newspapers. They don?t expect to have to dig through an obscure government website or look at the doors of the city council chambers every day just to make sure nothing has happened. No one knows what the future will bring in terms of technology. However, the fact of the matter is that right now, newspapers and their websites are the best sources of notice information. That is where people expect them and that is where the information will reach the most people. Matt, good stuff again. One point: You seem to think I'm saying forget newspapers, let the government publish on its website. No. My main point was, the City Paper's editorial wrongly asserted that newspapers are available to "the majority of Tennesseans" but that online cable media are not. That's, simply, false. And Cable and the Internet are GROWING while newspapers' numbers of subscribers are falling or flat. If not now, then, the day is coming soon that the publications of "general circulation" will be, in the main, electronic not on print. Here in Nashville for years we have had a "newspaper" called the "Nashville Record." It exists solely to publish "public notices." No one reads it. No one. The owner of that paper - a big newspaper chain - once fought hard to prevent the Nashville Business Journal from being declared a "newspaper of general circulation" because that meant NBJ would cut into its public notice revenue. Don't tell me it isn't about money. It absolutely is. Posted by: Bill Hobbs at June 13, 2006 4:12 PMPost a comment
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