The Junction City Commission this week considered establishing the city government’s own website as the “city newspaper” to avoid paying for the publication of legal notices. Three commissioners — Pat Landes, Jeff Underhill and Ronna Larson — expressed support for the idea and asked city attorney Britain Stites to provide more information on website visits and how much the city government would save by doing it. Currently, The Junction City Union is the official city newspaper. “What has happened, in the last 20 years, the internet and online publications have affected the paper press,” Stites said. “Not saying it’s good, not saying it’s bad; but that has been the reality of the market there. The reality is, their prices have gone up, but the readership has gone down — so if we publish things in there, are people really getting notice? The charter ordinance establishing the city website as their newspaper would require publication in the newspaper and to go through a protest period so it’s not a one-and-done thing or easy to do.” Stites said the city spends “hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year” on public notices. Because The Union is weekly, he said publishing notices that way also limits them on their time frame. He asked some questions on how the newspaper switching to a magazine format would affect deadlines. He also did not contact The Union before putting this on the agenda. Legally, governments have no control over the format of newspapers, which are necessarily separate (usually private) entities because they report on governments. Pinaire expressed opposition to the idea, saying having a community newspaper is valuable and doing this would “cut the knees off of the newspaper.” “I think the quality of the journalism has improved and so have the pictures, and it’s a valuable tool for the community,” Pinaire said. “This is our only newspaper,” Pinaire said, adding that communities across the nation that have lost their newspaper have set up non-profit organizations to replace them. “I think we need more support of the newspaper, not less. It’s been a rough business, sure, to survive, and we’ re not going to help it by that approach.”
Source: themercury.com
