There’s another argument increasingly relevant in the
longtime practice of state and local governments paying for public notices in
an official journal: the economic leverage governments can use against
newspapers, as exemplified by recent choices in Caddo Parish.
Last month, all of the major government in the parish – the parish, school district, sheriff’s office, and Shreveport – threw their public notice business to the Shreveport Times. That had to be a lifeline to the Times, which has been in steep decline in readership since the turn of the century, prints just a few pages per edition now (and misses a day a week in print), and has hardly any local staff and hard news coverage.
That turn for the worse accelerated when the privately-owned Georges Media Group planted an affiliate in the area, eating more into the Times’ revenues. The incoming largesse from government will boost its bottom line, although it has backup by being part of the USA Today Gannett Network, owned by a private equity firm.
