Legal notices in newspapers : What happens when papers cease publishing?

I received an e-mail last evening from an organization called Legal-Notice.Org.

Even after looking at their website, I am not exactly sure their cause or what they do. But their question of what happens as to legal notices when newspapers cease publishing piqued my interest.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune is ceasing to publish in print on a daily basis, starting this fall. The publication will reduce its print publication to 3 times per week.

As we here at the Legal-Notice.org are focused on legal notices, our question is what happens to those notices that are by state law to be published in a “Daily” Newspaper. Does the Times-Picayune still qualify? Given the newspaper industry’s relentless lobbying to keep public notices in print, it is ironic that this publication and many others like it, no longer feel obligated to keep their own products in print.

Great question. State codes are state codes. As a practicing lawyer, I didn’t get judgements, service of process, or court orders unless I filed an affidavit with the court proving I complied with legal notice requirements via publishing in the local newspaper.

Be it even outdated back in the ’80’s and early 90’s when I am not sure who read the legal notices to see if they were getting sued or their land seized, the system, enabled by old West-Law form books, worked for me and hundreds of thousands of lawyers.

No one ever gave a thought to a local paper going out of business or cutting back to 3 days a week, let alone a newspaper as renowned as the Times-Picayune, published since 1837.

The paper, now owned by the Newhouse family, has always had a high profile in New Orleans, if not not the journalism industry as a whole. Guys like me who are news and newspaper junkies, loved it has a paper if for nothing more than it’s name. (one picayune—a Spanish coin equivalent to 6¼¢)

If the the Newhouse family (owners of Advance Publications whose newspapers, magazines, and publications doing over $7 Billion a year) can announce like it did yesterday that Times-Picayune to cut paper to 3 days a week, aren’t we witnessing the beginning of the end of major print newspapers as we’ve known them.

If so, what happens to legal notices in newspapers? How do we move the processes in this thing we call the justice system?

Maybe you and ALM, who I am told derives significant revenues from legal notices, have some answers. Please share them with me and the RLHB community.