Custer County isn’t the only jurisdiction in Colorado where controversy has erupted over the publication of local notices. Greenwood Village and Pitkin County have had their own recent dust-ups over the designation of their local papers of record. The Pitkin County story is particularly instructive for the wrong reasons.
In late July, Pitkin’s Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) adopted the Aspen Daily News as its new official newspaper, displacing the Aspen Times, a daily that had served as the ski town’s paper of record since 1993. The Times had changed ownership at the beginning of the year, igniting several local controversies that apparently motivated the commissioners to make the change.
What interests us about the story are the unforced errors both papers made during this brief period when the issue of public notice made headlines. They were self-inflicted wounds that leave a heavier burden for others in the newspaper business who understand that maintaining newspaper notice is vital for transparency and must be defended.
The first gaffe was made by the publisher of the Aspen Times, an inexperienced, recent hire who was left to defend the paper at the public hearing where the BOCC was considering whether to switch its allegiance to the Times’ competitor. According to a report in the Daily News, she erroneously claimed “a lot of small towns are moving away from” newspaper notice and for reasons unknown urged the commissioners to allow radio stations, websites and other media to bid on the contract.
The county attorney had to inform her that Colorado law only permits print newspapers — like the one she was purportedly there to represent — to publish notices. Talk about cringe.
A few days later, the Daily News — the new paper of record! — published an absolutely incredible column about public notice by one of its former owners. The piece is largely incoherent but a few of the author’s points are clear. He claimed public notice advertising was a racket that allowed newspapers “to charge lofty rates for legal ads that typically came in tiny — unreadable, really — print.”
He also asserted that “the price of legal ads was a non-issue, mostly because businesses were footing the bills for mandatory ads.” (Colorado’s public notice statute sets fee limits for both government and private notices.)
The author used past tense but it’s not clear what he thinks has changed since the mythical bad old days when — he contends — the public notice game was rigged. Readers are left with the mistaken impression that newspaper notice is just a scam.
But we don’t blame the Times’ publisher or the Daily News’ columnist for their ignorance about public notice. It’s an arcane subject about which many people know little. We blame the newspaper companies that allow individuals who are uninformed to speak for them on this important issue.
Suggestion for both companies: Next time you need someone to defend newspaper notice in your community, do us all a favor and call Jordan Hedberg.