The other day someone on the radio said legals in the paper were no longer necessary. He argued legal notices could be “printed” for free on the internet and that no one noticed them in the newspaper anyway. I can’t prove he said that, I have no written transcript of what the gentleman actually said. I was even told these comments were edited for the later-in-the-day broadcast.
As far as not being noticed in the paper ... Do you really think they would be MORE noticed on the web or the radio?
Like the broadcast I missed ... I missed it. Done. Gone like so much water vapor.
If I miss it in the paper, I can still get one. If I want to research older notices I can still go look at old newspaper archives (stop by our office any time we are open). I assure you none of these have been edited for later perusal.
The truth is that some folks just don’t read legal notices. Those people deserve the “whatever” government, services and infrastructure they have failed to invest in.
Those that do read legals know about bids coming up or whether the insurance company they deal with actually has any money to pay a claim the reader might make.
Legal readers know what their local governing bodies are actually up to, how much these bodies are spending and where the money is going.
All very good reasons to at least give the legal notices a look.
Want to know if there is a hearing for that huge project in the works for your area?
Read your legals.
Informed people know where to look for these important pieces of information. That place would be your local newspaper.
If legal notices were only put on the internet, how would you know where to look for them? Hey, maybe there could be another website that lets you know where to look. But how would you know where that site was? Maybe we could post a notice at town hall letting us know where the website that lets us know about the other website is with the legal for which we are searching.
Do you really want to drive to town hall to check on something you don’t know is coming? Where will they post a notice of the legal website that will lead you to the legal? Someone should notify us about that too. Maybe a town crier. Hmmm ...
Possibly radio can serve a purpose by telling us about the legals in the paper. Oh, wait, that is exactly what just happened. If you want to read about the legal in question just like our beloved radio personality, you too can still pick up the newspaper.
Seems to me, knowing where your legals are and sitting down with your paper for a few minutes is somewhat easier than the goose chase it could be and a whole lot more comfortable to boot.
Sometimes the legals you see represent a great deal of money. It would occasionally be worthwhile for an entity to go back and edit what their legals said. You can do that on the web, like it or not. Given the amounts of money tied up and some of the egos involved, it’s a pretty sure bet this would eventually happen. You cannot further edit something once it is physically printed in your newspaper. If a correction needs to be made, the correction can be added at a later date. But you can still go back and see the original mistake and then the correction. Occasionally you can even read the reasons for the correction.
There are folks that cannot live without their web. For those individuals we do put our legals on our website. The Wyoming Press Association is currently working on a site for legals from across the state. Their intent is to take legals from every paper and put them into a searchable database. There are even plans to notify you by e-mail if and when particular legals come up.
But if you ever feel that the legal you had been reading online has somehow changed, you can still compare it to our permanent record.
If, for some reason, we ever were possesed to try to change our archives it would just be a waste of time. The eraser marks and white-out would give us away.
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