Skip to main content

Notice Me: Defending the Legal Notice

I woke up this morning to a fascinating discussion about legal notices on NPR's On the Media. It's a bit strange to put "fascinating" and "legal notices" in the same sentence, but those columns of tiny grey type in the back of the newspaper are actually quite important, and Arizona newspaper editor Le Templar made that case convincingly against some excellent questioning by Brooke Gladstone.

Several states including Arizona are considering eliminating the requirement that government print these ads in local papers, saying that they can just put them on their web sites for free. Gladstone basically asks, what's wrong with that? No one reads them anyway, and it's cheaper. Aren't these ads obsolete in the modern world?

Templar says no, not at all. First of all, they are read. When I was a local newspaper reporter, I read them all, because there were often stories hidden in there. Anyone who does business with government reads them. And while it's true they could read them on government web sites, in many areas they'd have to go to half a dozen or more badly organized web sites (a borough, surrounding townships, the county, the state, multiple federal agencies) to see all the necessary notices.

And even running the ads on local news web sites, he says, isn't enough. Published in the paper. a legal notice is firm evidence of what was publicized, and when. It can't be changed, removed, or placed online only after someone asks about it. It requires no technical knowledge or equipment to access or save it in a demonstrably unchanged form.

This is a case where "dead tree" publishing is alive and important. At the end of the interview, Gladstone says, "So, you're saying that newspapers can serve as a check on government? Where did you get that idea???" Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Templar.