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- Title
EXTRA!! EXTRA!! CLICK ALL ABOUT IT? MODERNIZING PUBLIC NOTICE LAWS IN A DIGITAL AGE.
- Authors
Cohen, Daniel S.; Koosed, Brian D.
- Abstract
For over 100 years, print newspapers have been a bedrock institution in American society, providing an affordable and effective means of mass communication. The federal and state governments have used print newspapers to facilitate the public's access to a variety of important information by implementing public notice laws. The mass adoption of the Internet, however, has disrupted the print newspaper industry, giving rise to digital news. As a result, the demand for print newspapers has declined. This reduced demand is not uniform; rather, there is a growing divide between print newspaper and online newspaper readers, often along socio-economic and generational lines. A key consequence of these developments is the diminishing efficacy of providing public notices through print newspapers. State legislatures across the United States have recognized this troubling trend. Over the last decade, some state legislatures have amended their public notice laws to include online newspapers or online repositories, while others have debated contentiously but ultimately decided not to implement such reforms. The various reforms enacted, however, may not be sufficient, in large part because they still tether notice to the print newspaper industry. This Article examines the rise and decline of print newspapers, comments on the debate over public notice law reform, and proposes an alternative to previously proposed and enacted laws: a technologically neutral set of standards, with one or more accompanying safe harbors tailored to the socioeconomic and demographic backgrounds of the particular community to which they apply. By decoupling public notice requirements from the print newspaper industry, this Article's proposal would enable governments and private entities to devise notices that more consistently achieve the intended purpose of public notice laws: actual notice.
- Subjects
LEGAL advertising; NEWSPAPER publishing; MASS media; INTERNET; ELECTRONIC newspapers
- Publication
Virginia Journal of Social Policy & the Law, 2019, Vol 26, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1068-7955
- Publication type
Article