|
West Virginia newspapers are already plagued by declining circulation and business ad revenues.
Now there's a threat to the revenue they get from legal notice ads placed by government agencies.
An audit presented to legislators meeting in Martinsburg suggests that state, county and local government can together save an average of $3.5 million dollars each year by posting those ads online.
Some 314 sections of state law mandate that government bodies buy newspaper ads for a range of legal notices.
Those laws were written long before the coming of the Internet.
Calhoun County spends about $12,000 a year with the Calhoun Chronicle for legal ads.
The Hur Herald has offered to publish them free.
The report says all told, government agencies have spent 10.6 million dollars on legal ads since mid-2004, including nearly four million last year.
The report estimated that once launched, a single web site for all state legal ads would cost a few hundred dollars.
Delegate Sam Argento of Nicholas County pointed out that some community newspapers will have to stop printing on a weekly basis if they lose legal ad revenue.
Lincoln County is providing fodder for a change.
A legislative audit of legal ad spending by government agencies found that Lincoln County paid $342,128 in the past three years for legal ads.
Only Kanawha and Cabell, the state's two most populous counties, spent more on legal ads during that time.
Two newspapers in Lincoln County, owned by the same company, The Lincoln Journal and the Lincoln News Sentinel, are qualified to run legal ads.
Dan Butcher, owner of a third paper that has opened in the county wants some of the ad action. The Lincoln Standard is suing the other newspapers' publisher and county officials.
Butcher claims the county is running more ads and spending more money than it should.
Lincoln County Commission President Charles McCann says the sheriff's office has run multiple and detailed ads concerning delinquent taxes since at least the 1980s. | 
