Thomas Jefferson famously wrote in a 1787 letter to Edward Carrington that “were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
He believed, as do we, that a free press — and specifically newspapers — is essential for keeping the public informed.
Newspapers have seen their business model severely compromised as social media and the internet have flourished over the past 20 years.
Legislation that recently passed out of the Iowa Senate Local Government Committee would eliminate public and legal notices in newspapers, further crippling an already struggling industry and pushing more papers toward closure.
If this legislation becomes law, city councils and school boards would no longer be required to pay to publish their board minutes, claims paid and other public business, except on their own websites.
It is not clear how much public notices generate for newspapers, but estimates range between 5% and 25% of total revenue. Eliminating that puts many newspapers in an even more precarious financial situation.
One Iowa newspaper owner estimated that eliminating legal notice revenue will kill a third to a half of the state’s newspapers, nearly all in rural communities.
While we continue to champion creative destruction — whereby innovation dismantles long-standing industries and replaces them with new, more productive ones — and have in fact benefited from the daily newspaper’s decline by filling the void in business news coverage, we do not want daily newspapers to die or decline further, and neither should you.
After all, someone needs to cover government affairs, and we do not unless a business-related issue is involved.
If this legislation passes, more daily newspapers will undoubtedly close, leading to a continued erosion of accountability for elected officials.
That is why public notices should remain in newspapers. It is also why we believe subscribing to a daily newspaper like the Cedar Rapids Gazette should be part of everyone’s civic responsibility.
To be clear, we are not a daily newspaper and do not receive public notice revenue.
Newspapers are vital to good government and civic responsibility. Public notices are part of that. Let’s keep them in our newspapers.
