A special by Stacy N. Brown for the NAHP
It hasn’t been the best of times in the print newspaper industry – if you’re so-called mainstream or legacy media.
What’s more, a consistent source of necessary revenue is now in peril.
Legal and public notices placed by government agencies have served as income generators since the advent of newspapers, but large federal entities like the Department of Environmental Protection Agency and state and local governments in places like Illinois, Arizona and small Maryland counties want to stop putting the notices in newspapers, instead places them on agency-controlled web pages.
While newspapers who carry a household name like the Los Angeles Times or Washington Post might be losing circulation and government agencies may argue they are losing their reach, the biggest losers in the battle to keep public notices could be newspapers whose circulations are actually growing and whose influence is greatest of all.
“We’ve come to expect big declines every time circulation numbers for newspapers are released. So, it’s a shock to see one area where they are growing: Hispanic weekly newspapers,” authors of a recent Pew Research Center study said.
A companion Pew Research study concluded that the Hispanic population consumes local and neighborhood news at a higher rate than the overall population.
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