By Steve Key - HSPA Foundation Board Member and Retired HSPA Executive Director

There’s a lot of angst in the newspaper world over the future of newspaper publication of public notice. With 30 years of lobbying the Indiana General Assembly and either opposing, supporting or trying to amend more 80 public notice bills, I think I have the basis to ask publishers, editors, and ad directors a simple question.

How much love and attention do you give to public notices?

I’m not talking about just professionally receiving the ads and making sure they get published to meet required deadlines. That’s just doing the same service you would provide to any advertising customer. I’m talking about going above and beyond to show the public the importance of public notices and the unique role newspapers have had in making sure those notices are seen by community readers.

How many publishers have instituted a policy requiring the advertising department to forward all public notices received to the news department? With news staffs slashed over the past few years, let’s help them find stories tied to public notices. Editors should appreciate the opportunity to create local content from notices walking through their front doors in the shape of a public notice.

How many editors take the time to review public notices or have their reporters split up the task of actually reading the public notices to see what stories exist? I firmly believe one story a week could be developed by even the smallest of newspapers if the effort is made.

The story might be a heads up on a zoning request to accommodate a business. It might be a small local business, a major construction by a national or international corporation, or a hot-button entity for the public, such as a data center. Even a mundane public notice can spark a story about the publication requirement. What’s the rationale behind requiring a person to give notice of a change in their name? The particular notice might not in itself be newsworthy, but the local, state or national rationale for a public notice is in itself newsworthy. If newspapers don’t educate the public on the reason public notices should be placed before them, who else do we expect will do it for us?

And when a newspaper does use a public notice, would it kill us to insert a sentence explaining that the story was sparked by a public notice? Just one sentence: "This story was sparked by a public notice published in the newspaper on (insert date)."

How many newspapers have reported on the proposed budgets of government units within a county? Have any of them ever referred the public to the budget notice required? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I can’t say anyone have ever brought that occurrence to my attention.

If you want to preserve public notices, show them some love. Or get used to making it a routine to check non-newspaper websites for the public notices that newspapers have been publishing in the United States since before we became a country.

Steve Key - HSPA Foundation Board Member and Retired HSPA Executive Director