From Where I Sit - In The World: Standard Examiner and SB 208

This mornings Standard Examiner editorial attempts to explain why newspapers should be the distributors of the coveted Legal Notices. (See Here) They lay out a set of unorganized scare tactics to encourage older readers to write their legislators and vote against this money saving piece of legislation. Where many cities will be savings $10,000 to $50,000, the Standard Examiner would ask you keep the money flowing to them because "newspapers are the best, most efficient place to publish these notices."

Std-X claims more people than ever read the newspaper: - True nearly 70 percent of Internet users in America go online to read the news (See Pew Research Center). Their next claim is they already recognize legal notices need to go online, so they publish their notices online to the Standard Examiner Website. They failed to mention they charge you a subscription fee to go online and read them. If legal notices are on their free site, I did a search and couldn't find them.

Next, the editorial staff makes an interesting claim regarding Internet usage:

"A third of all people will lose access to the notices"

Where did this statistic come from? Did they really just make this up? This argument makes no sense. Yes, nearly a third of Americans do not log on to the Internet for news. But does that mean they read the newspaper too. The Deseret News has report only 12 out 100 residents receive the print newspaper. That is 202,000 people. Moving notices online would give access to a lot more people nearly 498,000 people. (See Here)

One of my favorite lines was in reference to the future state website:

If by legislative fiat, legal notices are relegated to a clunky, non-user friendly government Web site, fewer Utahns will have access to the notices.

I am sorry, have you seen UtahLegalNotices.Com. If this isn't a clunky, non-user friendly website, I don't know what is. They website isn't even formatted right for regular browsers and some of the info on it is from 2005. There is a six step guide on how to log on, which was last updated in 2006. I will admit they are working on a new beta site which is supposed to be much better, but they have been trying to use their web technology for nearly four years and all they have come up with is a clunky, non-user friendly website. The infrastructure for a legal notices website is already in place and to get a good idea of what the state-run website would look like check out Utah Public Meeting Notices. Then feel free to compare the two websites.

The Standard calls SB 208 a loser because it will not reach enough people, but by their own statements people go online to read the news. If we can make the comparison of 498,000 Internet users in Utah and 70 percent go online for the news, that is 348,000 people. In comparison to 202,000 newspaper subscribers, I am not worried about reaching everyone. The real worry is people who only subscribe for legal notices possibly will leave stop subscribing, but don't worry that Standard will still charge you for their website.

They call SB 208 a loser because there will now be political influence on legal notices. I can see it now, Sen. Urquhart is looking for a good foreclosure because he will soon have the power to hold up the publishing of a notice so he can get his hands on it. Seriously, is this really an argument.

SB 208 is a loser because it will cost the state money to house these notices. Lets not forget the $100,000 SLC will SAVE in the first year. Lets not forget hundreds of thousands of dollars local cities will save or the hundreds of dollars local residents will save by this effort.

Finally the Standard claims media is - free of bias. To believe any of us are free of bias is absurd and ignorant. The Standard Editorials are always the bias of the editorial staff, how can one claim they are free of bias. That is like saying Fox News caters to republicans and democrats alike.

I thoroughly enjoy reading Standard Editorials; however not only was this the worst written editorial, but they are completely wrong.

To see more posts and actually facts read the following:

Oh and here is the editorial: