Help Support Online Journalism with AB 1902

If you support independent online community journalism, freedom of opportunities for businesses and the right of citizens to access public notices online instead of having to  hunt them down in obscure print publications far from their homes, the please support AB 1902, sponsored by East County Magazine and the East County Publishing Coalition. 

This measure will allow online news sites  such as Patch.com and East County Magazine to publish public notices and have the same revenue stream that print publishers currently have.  Your letters of support are needed now, since the bill will be heard Wednesday, April 18 in Sacramento and powerful special interests are trying to kill this bill.  Please send letters of support to editor@eastcountymagazine.org and Laurie.Paredes@asm.ca.gov.   

The current law was written before the Internet was invented, back in the telegraph days.  According to all credible studies the overwhelming majority of readers today now get more news online than in print.  When I spoke at a journalism college class recently and asked how many read a print newspaper daily, two hands went up – mine and the teacher. The students get their news primarily online.  Pew Research Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that more people now get news online than from any other source—and the online sector is growing rapidly as new technologies such as iPads, Blackberries and Smart Phones enable more and more people to access news online.   

Many towns in East County no longer have a print newspaper.  The Union-Tribune doesn’t deliver to rural areas such as Jacumba, so an increasing number of readers now rely on online news as their primary source of local news.  That’s why we have 4 million hits and 50,000 visitors a month, making us the third most widely read news site in the county.  Our readers should be allowed to access public notices in our online site that reaches their rural, mountain, and desert communities as well as urban areas.

With AB 1902, you will be able access public notices online free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Our site has a permanent archive with off-site storage, making it more secure and permanent than print newspapers where back issues may run out or a fire can destroy all records.   

This bill that will help businesses have more affordable places to post their public notices online and assure that readers will have more ways to find news about public notices in their communities. 

Cost of running a public notice could be less online, since publishing costs are far cheaper without the need for printing presses and delivery. So this bill will save money for businesses. 

Many print newspapers are going under, while online media flourishes.  It’s silly to say that major online news sites such as Voice of San Diego or AOL’s Patch.com (which runs sites in Ramona, Lemon Grove, La Mesa and Poway) should be banned from publishing public notices.

Opposing this bill is akin to subsidizing the typewriter industry when computers were invented, or the horse and buggy industry when automobiles came alone.  If we don’t adapt to new technologies and the vast majority of Americans and East County readers now online, it would be short-sighted.  Any print newspaper that wishes to be competitive simply needs to start a website and they, too, can run notices online as well as in print, or instead of if they choose. A teenager these days can set up such a site with the week’s top stories and a link for public notices, so the opposition is truly unreasonable.  

The lobbyists for the print-only newspaper industry want to kill this bill.  But some savvy print publishers SUPPORT it, for instance Indian Voices wants to run notices in both a print and online edition. Any teenager can set up a website for a print publisher who wants to be competitive online. 

Independent news outlets are important voices – covering issues like local city council actions,  East County festivals and business events,  charitable and nonprofit organizations’  activities, and other topics of interest to many in East County in depth that are often not covered in depth, if at all, by the print media in our region.

The bill restricts public notices to general interest news publications that have been around at least three years and have a substantial circulation, so you won’t see blogs running public notices, only the growing number of legitimate online news sites. 

It’s simply un-American to restrict  the freedom of choice of readers who want to read public notices online, or business owners wishing to place a public notice in an online newspaper. 

Miriam Raftery
Editor, East County Magazine
Mount Helix

Rafferty is also the co-founder of the East County Publishing Coalition.