"There may be an asteroid out there somewhere, and it may be hurtling towards us right now. But until it hits, there’s still some dinosaurs like me left walking around."
The Florida House on Thursday passed a bill that would strip the state’s newspapers of much-needed legal advertising revenue.
House Bill 35 would repeal a part of current Florida law that requires certain public notices — tax increases, special elections, etc. — to be published in print newspapers. Those notices provide Florida’s more than 100 newspapers with millions of dollars in revenue every year.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Randy Fine, R-Palm Bay, and other proponents say the current public notices system is out of date. The fact that people and local governments must pay print publications to publish legal notices amounts to a government subsidy of the “dying” newspaper business, they argue.
Read more at the Tampa Bay Times