Our newspaper colleagues in Manitoba are feeling a little grumpy these days.
What’s fueling their angst is a decision by the Manitoba government to allow local governments to publish legal notices on the internet instead of in local newspapers.
From coast-to-coast, the weeklies have been the go-to medium for municipalities advertising proposed zoning changes, tax notices and other information vital to taxpayers. It has been a good source of revenue for community newspapers and has been an effective way to communicate with the public for 150 years.
Then along came the internet.
And municipalities – along with a significant portion of the private sector – saw what they perceived to be an effective and, most exciting, less expensive method of getting their message to the masses.
Cheaper? Perhaps. As effective? Not likely.
Facebook may boast billions of members, and most municipalities have spiffy websites in which they’ve invested thousands of dollars and will continue to pour taxpayers dollars into. Websites are a lot like boats, they’re a bottomless pit of repairs and shiny new features.
But any message on Facebook has a very short shelf life. And there’s no guarantee that taxpayers are going to catch that zoning application meeting notice, if it’s even posted by the powers that be at Facebook.
And what’s the last time you sat down with a Lucky or latte to enjoy a cruise through the municipal website?
Yes, Mr. Dylan, the times are a-changin’, but studies consistently report newspapers continue to be well-read by the majority of the population and are still regarded as the most credible source of news and information.
Back to Manitoba. The Manitoba Community Newspapers Association is urging its members to stop publishing government news releases and columns by MLAs in retaliation for the legislation that will no longer require governments to post notices in newspapers.
“If our newspapers aren’t good enough to give public notice in, why would they want to have their news releases and their weekly columns in our papers,” asks Ken Waddell, president of the Association.
“It makes no sense at all.”
I agree with Waddell that it’s “bad for democracy” and in markets where hard copy newspapers are still devoured voraciously, using the local paper to keep taxpayers informed still makes a lot of sense.
At the Citizen, we are seeing dramatic increases in our website traffic, but we also know thousands of our readers rely on the print edition for their news and advertising.