For several days I have been wondering about why the Hartford Courant and other daily newspapers are so worked up about the possibility of losing money from municipal public notices.
Neither the Connecticut Council Of Municipalities nor the Connecticut Daily Newspaper Association claims to know how much money is involved – though the CDNA director told me he believes that based on public comment it amounts to about $100,000 just for East Hartford.
Well I checked with officials in West Hartford and they tallied up last year’s public notice costs, and it came to slightly more than $40,000 and not all of it would be limited to the Internet if CCM’s proposed legislation is adopted.
Foreclosure ads in today's Hartford Courant - is this what the real issue is?
That is chicken feed. The Courant alone has spent more than $40,000 in giving away these full-page ads to the CDNA trying to scare its readers that their right to information would be destroyed if the legislature passed the bill that would permit the towns to simply put these notice – which a person with normal eyesight can’t read anyway – only on free government Internet sites.
I started checking the paper daily and saw very few of these ads. But then I remembered where the real money in public notices is – FORECLOSURE ADS that are required by state judges.
I could hardly wait for today’s Courant to see how many pages of foreclosure ads there are – which you can actually read without magnifying glasses.
But before I got to the Real Estate section, I hit Page C6 where in red letters was another CDNA full-page ad shouting out “WHEN IS A PUBLIC NOTICE NOT A PUBLIC NOTICE?”
And guess what picture is in the middle of that ad? A person’s hands holding “FORECLOSURE” ads. That is where the money is, folks. Three pages of foreclosure ads in today’s paper alone.
It’s time for The Courant – the state’s largest newspaper – to tell its readers THE TRUTH about these issues. E-mail Courant Publisher Richard Graziano at RGraziano@tribune.com and tell him it’s time for the oldest newspaper in continuous circulation in America to stop lying to its readers and to tell us how much money The Courant gets for these ads and how much it stands to lose if the foreclosure ads move on to the Internet.
Ask him also, when has The Courant written a COMPLETE story about this VITAL issue.
Today's latest scare ad in The Courant, what is in the photo????
Foreclosure section from the photo on the other side of the page
George,
I am a big admirer of what you provide with this Web site, and of your work over the years at the Courant.
It surprises me that someone who has been such an excellent watchdog for consumers would take a stand against a strong public notice system in Connecticut.
My basic question is, how do residents know when they should look on a town Web site to see that a public hearing is coming up on a cell tower being located next door to them? How do they know to look there for word that selectmen are about to spend a lot more money than originally planned and that property taxes could go up again as a result?
The requirement that public notices be published in a mass media outlet is based on getting the community’s attention as they flip through the newspaper (or newspaper Web site) on their way to the comics and sports section. It remains the best community bulletin board out there.
Add up all the Web traffic combined of the municipal Web sites in Northwest Connecticut, and I’d be willing to bet that it is still a fraction of the print and Web traffic of the newspapers these municipalities are required to publish legal notices in.
The cost to town governments of these notices is a TINY, MINISCULE FRACTION of their overall budgets, and the cost to taxpayers if the community was not aware of government spending decisions, for example, would dwarf this cost.
And FYI, legal advertising (all legal advertising, not just from municipalities) represents less than 4 percent of total revenue for my group of newspapers. We wouldn’t want to lose that revenue, but we would get by without it. To me, it’s more about good government, which is transparent government.
Matt DeRienzo
Publisher
The Register Citizen and Foothills Media Group
Torrington, CT
mderienzo@foothillsmediagroup.com
Matt
First of all thank you for coming on our site and leaving a message.
I feel very strongly about this issue because I want newspapers to survive. This media campaign however is continuing to erode newspaper credibility. No one reads these notices, even if you wanted to you could not read them because they are tiny.
Not everyone gets newspapers, not everyone knows which day to look for notices, newspapers get tossed….. These are all bogus arguments. If you recall when the New York Times first began publishing it decided NOT TO ACCEPT any paid legal notices because it did not want to depend financially on them.
This whole battle has to do with money, not informing the public. The public is better served by knowing that all public notices are posted on the Internet and in town halls and all foreclosure notices are available on the judicial side.
I for one would be happy to publish all public notices FOR FREE and they can stay up on my site forever.
Claiming that I am against letting the public know the facts is outrageous. I have spent 40 years informing the public and turned down a six digit severance package so I could continue to COMPLETELY inform the public.
George
How is what the newspapers do any different than what is available via http://ct.mypublicnotices.com/PublicNotice.asp
I mean, if I need to know of something going on in my hometown (Wallingford) I have to know around the time the notice was in the paper and then call the newspaper to request a back issue of that paper.
When I go to http://ct.mypublicnotices.com/PublicNotice.asp I can search a database that goes back over a month.
Why can’t a database like this be extended to not have a recycle date and be the longstanding and permanent repository for this information?
Just because it’s always been the newspaper does not mean it has to continue going on that way just because. What is the value over having it online where anyone can reference it from anywhere in the world?
The Web site that you cite is run BY THE NEWSPAPERS! We put all of our legal ads up on that site as a way to make them searchable and accessible online in addition to being in print.
It’s easy for the most informed and most tech-savvy to say, “What is the public’s problem? They can just go online every day and search, etc.” but that’s not how the average person lives. The average person is not engaged all the time in selectmen’s agendas and budget notices. But they should be able to earn a living and enjoy their home and property if they choose without being that engaged. That’s where requirement that important government decisions and actions be noticed in a mass media vehicle comes in … so they get a heads up when they need one.
I should be clear and say I don’t question George’s motives or commitment to advocacy of citizens’ right to know, I just disagree strongly with him about the value of these notices.
I can tell you firsthand they are read religiously by many people who would never on their own search the Web for something that may or may not be affecting them on any given day, and they have led many, many times to changes in government actions.
Matt DeRienzo
Publisher
The Register Citizen and Foothills Media Group
Torrington, CT
mderienzo@foothillsmediagroup.com
As a resident of a small, rural town, I read some of those advertisements with interest. They talk about how horrible it would be if we lost those notices in our “local” paper. As someone who takes an interest in local government, I regularly hear about the cost of those notices to my town. And, recently, the Hartford Courant changed the way their legal notices work – NOW my town will be paying TWICE as much for the same notices since the paper decided to change their distribution regions.
Now, I am all about people getting these notices in ANY way they can. But to CHARGE the towns for it, and then give FREE SPACE to coalitions meant to SAVE a source of income for the newspaper, THAT’S where I take issue. The Hartford Courant has acted in an unconscionable manner and decided to effectively TAX the taxpayers of my town by indirectly increasing their fees they charge my town government. THAT is what I feel the issue is, not whether to have them or not, and the Courant is trying to use FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) to scare us into protecting their revenue stream by hiding the true cost to us.
The Internet is one option, but if papers were required to disclose their fee structure for these ads, and go through a government commission for changes (similar to the electric companies going through the DPUC), or be told to do them free for the government agencies, I think everyone might be agreeable to it. Foreclosure ads are a cost of business for financial institutions, and the common resident of CT doesn’t really pay for those ads. Let the Courant keep that revenue, but don’t let them TAX me for knowing what my town and state government is doing.
Dave
Dave, don’t be sucked in by this PR campaign, you would not lose anything, you would simply stop subsidizing newspapers. All those notices would still be in the Town Halls and on many internet sites.
George
The fact remains that, despite the year, not everybody has internet access. Frankly, if my financial situation was such that my house was in danger of being foreclosed, I can guarantee that the expense of internet access would have been one of the first things I cut from the budget.
Somehow, provisions would have to me made so that those people without could get access to free services, such as at a library, and know when it was relevant to go in and look. Not so easy, but perhaps not much different from knowing when to pick up a paper.
Susan, thanks for taking the time to write us. You raise a valid concern. The studies I have seen show that Internet service and cell phones are the last things people give up. And YES public libraries have FREE INTERNET services. The issue is should taxpayers be bailing out newspapers for all their wasteful spending in the past and for their bad business decisions. Don’t be fooled by the PR attack from the newspapers, as we know they can distort the truth as well as politicians can when its in their interest. Have you read a balanced, complete story on this issue in a newspaper that details how much money is involved???? I haven’t.
George, I fully agree with you on this one. If the newspapers can provide full page ads to respond against this, then they can also publish the notices as a “Public Service” at no cost to the state and municipalities. After all, they can derive their income on the subscribers and advertizements and provide some pro bono work for the good of the community. They could even add a notation at the top of the page patting themselves on the back for providing this service free of charge to the community that supports them in the first place. So instead of newspapers like the JI who was going to sue the Town of Manchester (also indirectly the taxpayers of Manchester) over an ordinance on the placement of newsracks to sell the papers and being a bad guy, they can look much better to us by providing this free service to the town.
A few months ago the Judicial branch made changes to the foreclosure notice procedures. Now only a summary notice is published in the local papers; the detailed notice is online on the state website. These seems like a reasonable approach and a fair compromise to preserve good public notice yet save some money. [In foreclosures it’s either the poor debtor who pays in the end.] But the New Haven Register plays games with this change. Their new non-negotiable [!] standard form foreclosure ads have more big letters and white space. An old full detail ad that cost $455 is now $440 for the summary! The State tries to save money and the Register tries to preserve it’s ad revenue with these shenanigans.