A bad decision
Marion County and residents of Kansas should be aware of a bad decision made this past week at Hillsboro.
The City Council passed a resolution designating the Hillsboro Free Press Extra as that town's official newspaper.
A well intentioned effort to "pass the business around" resulted in moving the official newspaper designation from Hillsboro Star-Journal, which has served the community well for nearly a century.
The result is that the official city newspaper has become a publication with only 135 subscribers, as opposed to the S-J's more than 1,500. Official legal notices will be published in tiny type that is difficult for the elderly to read, instead of normal sized print in the S-J, and the city will pay F P Extra a higher price than offered by the Star-Journal.
Kansas newspaper editors who honestly believe in the concept of official notices as the proper means of informing the public should take note of what happened at Hillsboro. It can happen anywhere.
The primary purpose of legal advertising is to inform the public, not to reward friends in the newspaper business.
State law requires that official public notice shall be published in a paid circulation newspaper, one more than a year old, with "general" circulation.
How can a newspaper with 135 paid circulation be considered "general" circulation when the traditional newspaper for the town has more than 10 times that many?
It happened at Wichita for years, until political leaders got wise and designated the Wichita Eagle instead of a small publication of limited circulation. It also was happening at Lawrence where the Journal-World dominates, at Topeka where the Capital-Journal is the general circulation newspaper, and other places across Kansas where official notices were not being published in the true "general circulation" newspaper. Fortunately, local leaders have designated the Capital-Journal, Eagle, and Journal-World. They now publish official public notices. The public is being informed instead of government operating in semi-secret surroundings.
Anybody with a computer, large-format photo copier, and a few dozen relatives can start a newspaper and after a year become designated to publish official notices. A local newspaper which may offend local political leaders can be punished by politicians, they do so by designating a limited circulation publication as the official newspaper. It happens.
The time has come for Kansas Press Association, American Civil Liberties Union, and courageous publishers across the state to correct this travesty. They should ask the Legislature to make the law more explicit, defining the term "general" circulation.
Many units of government don't want the public to know what's going on. They publish with small type in the smallest circulation newspaper available. That's wrong. So was the decision at Hillsboro.
— BILL MEYER
