As we experience here in Tennessee every day and for the past 200 years or more, our state and local government creates no vendor or marketplace competitive pressures by our unchanged method of “publishing” their notice requirements with no basis other than maybe the “general circulation”. All this taxpayer money continues to change hands with the declining subscriptions of one media, having been chosen those many years ago over other media unavailable at the time.
But, you’ve got to hand it to those “press” guys and girls though; they take the potential revenue loss very serious and rise up to the occasion with those “out-of-business” cries and solid elected official endorsements when their “honey hole” is threatened. They have also done a masterful job developing their digital outreach with the broadcast industry playing catch up or not really taking any possibility of these “public’s notices” ever changing?
Thankfully though, for the public’s additional edification along with this issue, the press also takes any threat on our Open Records or Open Meetings requirements very serious too. It’s all-in-the-family I guess. I only wish the broadcasting industry would understand the true and news gathering implications of this scenario and be more active politically. These constant assaults on the transparency of government dealings and the public’s available information become more critical each passing day for all Americans. In Tennessee, we have over 350 exemptions to our open records, open meetings laws?
There are usually no readership or subscription requirements on the vendor’s part, only the “publishing” requirements on the part of government. Government expense is in most cases determined by a monopolistic newspaper business or sole provider in each market? How do you think those rates compare to a yard sale ad? LUR anyone?
We do no other business as a State in this manner. Billions of dollars of private industry advertising and information is done every day in the very manner we are suggesting – competitively and cost effective to achieve ever-improved results and real public knowledge of a product or service.
Government must first decide if they are just fulfilling a long-standing requirement or truly interested in the public knowing its business? School Boards are notorious late notifiers. Any new legislation should not be an attempt to remove public notices from the print media nor their websites. There should simply be an opportunity – at the discretion of the governing body – to bring additional ways to publicly disseminated information to a new and more diverse audience.
And, I don’t mean put it up there on a government website with no cross-promotion because that’s exactly where it will live – and die for the free rein of some in government.
In general, newspaper circulation and time readers spend with their papers has been declining since the end of World War II. Many Tennesseans don’t read the paper at all and those that do are spending less time than ever with their local paper. Utilizing the “new” electronic media in conjunction with newspapers has proven to increase the reach among these light readers and younger demographics.
Studies have also shown that newspaper ad size has little impact on ad recall so the size and cost of the current public notices could be reduced – add another media as a “referral” notice – and boost both the reach and frequency of the information with a new audience. Newspapers could benefit with a whole new audience potential. Most advertisers and even the newspapers themselves buy more than one media when they want to increase subscriptions or sell a product or service – so why should public notices be any different?
The only readers the current requirements now reach in these “classified” type-sections of the newspapers where these ads are typically run are the people who are looking for them anyway. Newspapers do not give the same level of notice it did when the current publication requirements were developed with the help of Benjamin Franklin and other publishers of the day. The addition of electronic media would help stimulate interest by directing a new audience to the sometimes lengthy, complex or detailed information that only the newspaper can deliver.
Most radio and television stations believe that full disclosure of the information would be bad programming anyway, so their primary interest would be to cross promote the newspaper’s listing, or an additional government website with lengthy script protections.
Although Article XI, Section 3 of our Tennessee Constitution does not define “publication”, our Office of the Attorney General has in previous reviews stated that “any notice that provides the electorate with the text of the proposed amendment” is constitutionally sufficient (Op. Tenn. Atty. Gen. U97-06 (February 6, 1997).
Nothing ever changes around here but the exemption attempts.
–Whit Adamson, Tennessee Association of Broadcasters
