From the Editors: Current attempts to ‘modernize’ public notices fall short
Technology has drastically changed the landscape of the media industry. No longer are people awaiting a young boy on bicycle to fling their daily news into the yard. Newspapers are going the way of the dodo bird, as the audience flocks to the internet and gets their news through social media platforms.
Pennsylvania legislation has not caught up. Its current law about public notices dates to 1976, a golden age of print journalism, but one very different from our own., In its latest attempts to right the ship, both House and Senate bills fall far short of bringing laws into this millennium. Yet, in its most recent version, one has passed the state’s House and is working its way toward being law.
How exactly did two different pitches to government both lack the actual abilities to meet the needs of its people? With Pennsylvania’s brightest minds at the helm, how did both government officials and even a trade organization for the industry miss the mark so vastly?
The state’s legislature has a number of solutions on the drawing board alleging a modern-day answer to a known problem. Public notices are expensive. Public notices, as it stands, are legally required to be published in outdated, and sometimes nonexistent, print media outlets. However, neither hits the nail on the head.
House Bill 1291
On the surface, Bill 1291 starts out with promising language. In a press release on Feb. 10, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Robert Freeman said that entities would “be able to publish public notices in digital newspapers and free publications.” However, the details leave much to be desired. These alternatives can only be utilized IF there is no print newspaper still published in the area.
In the fine print, the restrictions continue. Such an online entity must also be at least one of the following:
- Ownership in or distributors of a printed newspaper
- Capable of circulating printed newspapers
- A “digital descendant” of a printed newspaper product.
The bill would allow for additional, online access to public notices, but fails to acknowledge that a large portion of new, existing news outlets have started online. There are no new newspapers coming to market. If they have come into existence in the past 20-plus years, they’ve been on the web. These restrictions allow advertisement on the website of a formerly print newspaper, but not on the otherwise identically situated website of a new media outlet – like the one you are now reading.
This bill has largely been backed by the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. Formerly the “Pennsylvania Newspaper Association,” the industry trade organization updated its name in 2012. The change was to make it inclusive of the digital media landscape. In the words of Alanis Morrisette, “Isn’t it ironic, don’t ya think?”
For a trade organization to claim it represents its members, PNA seems to forget that many of them would be locked out of this advertising revenue due to the bill’s fine print. Traditionally protective of its antiquated ancestry, the nonprofit is cutting out its digital members, even going as far as to compete against them with its own online platform for these ads.
According to Northwestern’s Local News Initiative, newspapers are vanishing.
“Newspapers continue to disappear at an alarming rate: in the last year alone, 148 vanished due to closures or mergers, a little more than two each week,” said its 2025 report on the matter. “As of this year, there are fewer than 1,000 daily print newspapers remaining in the United States.”
Yet a bill supported by PNA keeps its feet strongly rooted in the past.
What is Bill 1291’s response to a need for modernization? Publish them on the PNA’s own website. No, the bill does not outright NAME the PNA, but it does demand that such publication online be:
- A “statewide association representing print and digital news media organizations”
- Headquartered in Harrisburg
- Includes a “majority of newspapers of general circulation serving” the state
- That it be in existence continuously for at least 50 years.
No, that’s not a typo. FIFTY YEARS! Does anyone want to guess the age of PNA? It was founded in February 1925, making it a ripe old age of 101. This requirement virtually eliminates the possibility of any other organization being permitted to house the online Public Notice ads.
Bill 1291, which was introduced on April 23, 2025, was voted on in the Pennsylvania House Committee on Feb. 4, 2026, with the bill passing 14-12, along straight party lines. All Democrats voted in favor of the bill, while all Republicans voted against. The bill must now await full House of Representatives approval.
Senate Bill 194
Like its HB1291 counterpart, Senate Bill 194 is also aimed at the same goal: amending the 1976 Newspaper Advertising Act
Senate Bill 194 was introduced by Senator Doug Mastriano. It too aimed to “modernize” public notice regulations to allow local governments to have “options.” However, instead of pushing for newsprinted publications and their legacy web presences, SB 194 wants us to trust municipalities directly.
While this bill brings us into the modern era, allowing online printing of such ads, it misses the purpose entirely. Public notices have stringent regulations in order to keep governmental entities in line. Media has an obligation to serve as an additional check on the government. How can ads be dutifully tracked, ethically published, and trusted by the public if the one and only “check” is that entity itself?
Public oversight cannot exist when there is such blatant conflict of interest. Of course a governing body will say its public notice was placed on time. Of course it will be able to create “proof” of its own actions. It is like taking the word of the defendant that they are, in fact, innocent. It plants the fox firmly at the hen house gate.
According to the PNA president Bill Cotter, his organization “calls SB 194 bad for government transparency, accountability and, ultimately, taxpayer protection.”
“As a disinterested third party, newspapers complete the legal publication process by providing the best possible evidence to a court, via proof of publication, if there is a legal challenge,” said Cotter in an op/ed on the matter. “A publisher has no vested interest in the outcome of such a case. A government entity does.”
Monopoly much?
The taxpayers’ money is at the crux of this debate. How should your dollars be spent? Are you in favor of your funds propping up near-death paper products struggling to survive, or their digital offshoots overburdened by legacy obligations?
Or should there be an open marketplace in which municipalities have the freedom and flexibility to shop at the best rates, selecting from a variety of products, and not just those with pre-historic ancestry.
Additionally, power must remain outside the hands of the government. We cannot expect a government to “check and balance” itself. In these pages, we have covered countless instances of prospective Sunshine Act violations where municipal solicitors deploy legal acrobatics to keep “We the People” from asking the tough questions.
As newspapers continue to be bought up, consolidated, closed, or merged, how can the oldest print products be the only ones that the public can trust? Being created in a recent decade does not decrease an establishment’s unbiased news approach, ability to deliver quality daily content, nor take away from its service to the public. Likewise, allowing digital publication if the organization used to be on paper — but not if it has always been digital — draws an irrelevant distinction that transparently favors incumbency and undermines public trust.
Local governments have weighed in
Frank Mazza, director of the Government Relations for the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP), testified on the House bill on Sept. 29, 2025.
“We believe the bill falls short of providing the real flexibility and cost savings that local governments and taxpayers urgently need,” he stated in testimony. “Under HB 1291, counties would still be tied to legacy print newspapers as the primary vehicle for meeting statutory requirements, even as circulation declines and publication schedules dwindle.”
Mazza said that timing of publications causes logistical problems, where posting online could be immediate, searchable, and alert-based for subscribers. Mazza also said that “counties should not be forced to purchase costly newspaper ads as the gateway to transparency.” He said, while CCAP shares in the desire to have open, accessible, and transparent public notices, a “meaningful modernization” is necessary.
We agree: meaningful modernization is necessary. The legislature should take the best from both bills: allow digital-only outlets to publish, while ensuring that they are truly independent from the local governments they cover. New Jersey has recently made a change in their law that would do exactly this — simply copying that legislation would be a vast improvement.
According to a PEW Research Center study, 60 percent of people get their news digitally — far more than from any other method. Pennsylvania should help them find it there.
