On Notice: How Removing Newspaper Notices Is Killing Civic Engagement

Last year, 14 states introduced legislation intended to revoke long-standing requirements that public notices — those government announcements ranging from public hearings and meetings to upcoming elections and official proceedings — appear in qualified print newspapers, joining states such as Florida, Louisiana, and Ohio that have already passed such laws.

As the authors of a recent study on these newspaper notices write, the “distinguishing feature” of these public notices was ensuring “every citizen has a realistic opportunity to read them.”

And as their analysis of the effects in Florida show, citizens are simply no longer getting the message.

As America’s Newspapers helps to break down, between 2020 and 2024, there was a 48% reduction in newspaper notices for cities located in counties that had previously established public-notice websites, with public hearing notices — “the category most closely tied to citizen participation” — seeing a 44% decline.

Even if those declines are to be expected, it was the study’s look at those public-notice sites that sounds the loudest alarms.

“The study found no measurable increase in traffic to county public notice websites,” writes America’s Newspapers, “suggesting residents did not shift their attention to the new platforms”

The study of affected jurisdictions also found a 14-18% decline in the number of citizens speaking at meetings and a 28-35% increase in commercial zoning permits, suggesting these removals of information “reduces citizen engagement.”

“Public notice laws were created to ensure citizens are informed before decisions affecting their communities are made,” says Dean Ridings, president and CEO of America’s Newspapers. “Local newspapers continue to provide the broadest and most reliable public visibility for those notices across both print and digital platforms.”