Change in law allows YachatsNews to expand its “public notice” offerings for local governments, readers

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews

Aided by a tweak in state law by the 2023 Oregon Legislature, YachatsNews has expanded its services to local governments and the thousands of readers who use the news site each week.

This is a brief update to explain it – and encourage local governments to use our service and explain to readers what they are seeing.

Oregon law requires all varieties of local governments to alert the public to hearings, proposed budgets and foreclosure sales. They can do that in a variety of ways but the most prominent has been publishing “public notices” in the classified ad section of newspapers.

For decades those notices were the exclusive domain – and a big source of income — of newspapers, be they the big city papers or the small weeklies scattered across the state.

But the declining reach of those big papers, the loss or cuts of local newspapers and the rise of online news sites such as YachatsNews led legislators in 2023 to tweak the state’s public notice requirements. Such notices now can be published on online news sites so long as those sites meet certain conditions.

And so more and more local governments are seeing the benefit of moving their public notices to online news sites. These benefits include:

• The dramatically lower cost;
• That most news sites are free to anyone to read and do not charge subscriptions, unlike newspapers;
• The notices stay available online for as long as the local government wishes and do not disappear when readers toss out that day’s or week’s newspaper;
• The tiny type is not buried on Page 17 of the local weekly’s classified ad section. The notices are more prominently displayed on the news site’s homepage, potentially giving readers a better chance of seeing and going to them; and
• Readership of online news sites is growing dramatically. The current number of “page views” over a running 30-day period of YachatsNews is 165,000, for example.

Some local governments have been hesitant to move to publishing their required notices online because of some unclear language in the 2023 legislation. The 2025 Legislature is expected to take up the issue again and hopefully clear up any lingering questions.

But that hasn’t stopped the city of Salem from moving its notices to the online Salem Reporter, or the city of Philomath and Philomath School District from publishing notices with the online Philomath News, or the city of Ashland using that community’s local news site, Ashland News.

Several local governments in Lincoln County have already moved some or all of their public notices to YachatsNews. These include the city of Waldport, Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue, Southwest Lincoln Water PUD, the city of Depoe Bay, and Oregon Coast Community College.

For the first time this week, Lincoln County published its annual notice of foreclosure sales on both YachatsNews and the Lincoln County Leader. YachatsNews charged $120; the Leader charged more than $2,375 to publish the same information over 2½ pages in its Wednesday edition.

The city of Salem estimates it will save close to $40,000 in costs by moving its regular public notices from the Statesman Journal newspaper to the online Salem Reporter.

The option for local governments now gives them a way to save money, offers a wider and longer notice to constituents, and to support of a nonprofit, local and subscription-free news operation. What’s not to like about that?

• Quinton Smith is the editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com