Print circulation has been declining for years, so newspapers must become creative if they expect to continue to attract eyeballs to their public notice ads.
In Ketchum, Idaho, the Idaho Mountain Express has for many years maintained a pretty simple strategy for drawing attention to their public notices: The 45-year-old newspaper publishes a “Cliff Notes” summary of notices in the news section of its print edition (see graphic below); the summary points readers to the complete, official notices published in its “local life” section. The Mountain Express also publishes the summary in its e-edition along with instructions for where readers can find the official public notices in the print issue and online.
“We thought that our readers may not take time to go into our newspaper and search through our published legal notices on their own initiative, and we wanted to raise their overall visibility,” said Pam Morris, publisher and co-owner of the Mountain Express.
In addition to summarizing the notices, editors translate the “legalese” into common English for the average reader.
“They are just a quick and dirty summary, or news-at-a-glance,” added Connie Johnson, a Mountain Express co-owner and business manager. “We have been doing it for so many decades, they are now woven into the fabric of our newspaper.”
The Mountain Express also consistently reports on the matters their public notices ads are designed to publicize. Johnson is the newspaper’s self-appointed guardian of the notices. She helicopters them, selects the ones she deems newsworthy and delivers them to the newspaper’s editor for possible conversion into news articles. Johnson reckons they have published hundreds of stories gleaned from public notices.
Morris and Johnson recognize their readers use the newspaper and public notices to stay engaged with the community.
“We believe our residents read the newspaper from front to back, judging from their feedback. We also see the results of our treatment of public notices and news coverage when residents show up at public meetings and hearings,” Morris said.
The Press of Atlantic City (N.J.) takes a different approach, shining a light on a specific class of notices important to their readers. The BH Media Group paper publishes an online round-up of South Jersey development projects gleaned from applications to local Planning and Zoning boards advertised in the public notice section of the paper.
The webpage is a photo essay of sorts, featuring full-color photographs and detailed descriptions of projects such as a deck reconstruction on a bridge, the demolition of a shed at a local armory building, and a local road-resurfacing project.
The development summary also includes deadlines for bids, public hearing dates, construction schedules and other details that help to demystify local projects that many citizens are aware of but know little about.
From a certain perspective, the extra steps the Idaho Mountain Express and The Press of Atlantic City take to bring attention to their notices is something newspaper publishers have been doing for decades: finding ways to help their advertisers make an impact in the community. It’s only unusual because many publishers aren’t in the habit of thinking about the local governments and state agencies that are required by statute to publish notices in their papers in the same way they think about their other advertisers. That’s an attitude adjustment that ultimately may prove critical for the newspaper industry to maintain its historical public notice franchise.