Newspapers issue SOS about public notices
Legally mandated public notices at the back of newspapers may disappear
A waste of money that nobody reads — or a crucial public service?
Those grey, legally mandated public notices at the back of newspapers may go the way of the dodo if a Quebec government bill goes through.
Some municipalities are cheering because they would be able to post the notices — about bylaws, zoning changes and property taxes, among other things — on their own websites instead, cutting costs.
But critics say the notices, when they’re published on paper, reach a broader audience and provide a lifeline for newspapers struggling with a dramatic drop in advertising.
This week, a coalition of newspapers warned a National Assembly committee that the disappearance of the notices in newspapers “would lead to the loss of at least 100 quality jobs and the closure of many papers.”
In the wake of municipal corruption exposed in recent years, “the publication of public notices in print newspapers across Quebec acts as a watchdog for those who manage municipal governments,” the coalition said. “It ensures respect for the right of public access to essential information.”
Municipalities spend about $10 million per year publishing such notices — or about five-hundredths of one per cent of the $18.2 billion they disburse every year, according to the coalition, which includes Le Devoir and 177 other Quebec papers, many of them free community weeklies that rely solely on advertising.
Public notices aside, government advertising in general has dropped precipitously in recent years, the coalition said. The federal government, for example, spent $20 million on newspaper ads in 2004. Ten years later, spending in papers had dropped to under $400,000, while Ottawa was spending $4.7 million on ads on Facebook and Google.
Publisher David Price isn’t sure how the change will affect his two papers — the Westmount Independent, and the Free Press, which covers Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, Côte-St-Luc and Hampstead.
But across Quebec, “some municipalities will undoubtedly reduce advertising to zero and it’s my guess that will make a big difference” to many local newspapers, he said.
And the resulting drop in advertising revenue will mean a reduction in local journalism, added Price, whose papers have a combined circulation of 41,000.
“Local news matters to people,” he said. “Your local tax bill, sports and recreation, traffic, parking, crime — all these things matter to you in a way that some metropolitan, provincial, national, international issues do not matter. You can also affect your local environment more than you can others levels.
“And if you don’t know about it through a local paper, you’re disconnected, you don’t know what’s happening and you can’t impact it.”
He said it’s true the notices are not heavily read, but by putting them in newspapers that are distributed widely in the community, they can alert people to things that might directly affect them, such as zoning changes and public meetings.
Municipalities have been lobbying for the change for years.
Quebec finally said yes via Bill 122, legislation that would give municipalities more autonomy and powers. Among the other things it would do is remove the right of residents to force referendums on zoning changes.
A National Assembly committee held hearings on the bill this week.
Among those opposed to changing the public-notice rule was a group representing 140 Quebec chambers of commerce. It told a National Assembly committee that at a time when people are demanding more transparency, it would be a mistake to stop disseminating information via local and regional newspapers, which are widely read.
Supporters of the change included the city of Montreal, which said the obligation to publish notices in newspapers was among rules “conceived in another century” that were due for modernizing.
Scrapping the obligation was also supported by the Union des municipalités du Québec, which represents about 300 cities and towns.
“Communication tools have evolved” and municipalities should be allowed to decide how to publish notices, Drummondville Mayor Alexandre Cusson, a UMQ vice-president, said in an interview.
He said some municipalities will continue to publish in newspapers because that’s the best medium for them, because they want to ensure the survival of local publications, or because they don’t have good websites.
He said Drummondville, for example, “will quite possibly continue to publish in print media but with a presentation that is clearer, more accessible” than current public notices, which are text heavy and written in legalese.
The coalition of newspapers, set up to promote the long-term survival of print news media in Quebec, has previously called on the province to give struggling newspapers financial relief over the next five years. Among other things, it wants refundable tax credits.
But Cusson noted newspapers are already in decline, and said it should not be up to municipalities to financially support newspapers. That should be the province’s role, he said.
He noted that newspapers are adapting by going online and municipalities may decide to buy ads on newspaper websites.
“I have confidence in our media, in their creativity, in their capacity to propose services to municipalities,” including innovative ways to publish public notices on newspaper websites, Cusson said.
But Price said the Internet will never replace print media on neighbourhood reporting.
“The web will never be able to cover local news because you’ll never get the clicks to pay your costs, you’ll never have enough users,” Price said.