Statewide Legislation

A bill to amend the wording of the state law that would allow municipalities to place legal ads in a “newspaper of general circulation” or a local community news website would have two benefits:

• The cities and towns that must now pay the often-steep asking price for legal ads in newspapers would save money, since online news sites would almost certainly charge less.
• Notices in online news sites, which are rapidly growing in readership, would reach more readers and thus offer greater transparency (the original intent of the law), because the circulation of paper newspapers has correspondingly plummeted in recent years.

H.4787 would change the law to require each municipality to place its legal notices in both a legacy newspaper and a community website. While this would benefit local news sites, it’s obviously not ideal for cities and towns, who will have to pay more for legal notices rather than less.

This bill succeeds H.2098 from earlier in 2024, which did not remove the requirement for publication in a newspaper but said municipalities “may also publish the legal notice on a community news website.” While this woyld benefit news sites economically, it will actually cost cities and towns more, since they wold now have to pay to run legal notices in two places.

Town governments support removing the newspaper requirement

The Massachusetts Municipal Association, which represents the elected and appointed people who run the local governments of the 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth, expressed “strong support” for H.1723 and S.1137 in a June 2023 letter to the Joint Committee on the Judiciary:

“For many cities and towns in Massachusetts, local online newspapers can better serve their immediate communities than larger print newspapers, which in many communities is the only allowable newspaper to publish legal notices. Local online newspapers are regularly a first resource for community members to stay informed of local events and issues. These outlets are a logical source for residents to access local legal notices posted by cities and towns.

“Further, with dwindling competition among print newspapers, the higher costs for posting legal notices places unnecessary stress on municipal budgets. Allowing for legal notices to be published by online-only newspapers will introduce additional competition to the market, likely reducing publication fees and the costs to municipalities.”