In a recent article titled Data on legal notices is bad news for newspapers, Roch Smith jr writes:
"Data from Guilford County show that tax collections were unaffected by whether or not delinquency notices were published in the News & Record."
Despite claims to the contrary from the News & Record,. Roch also includes documentation along with writing:
"Years of data from Guilford County show that whether tax notices were published in the mighty News & Record or only in the the tiny Jamestown News and Carolina Peacemaker, tax collections remained a steady 98+ percent. And if you want to get picky, collections actually went up slightly in years when notices were not placed in the News & Record."
But as Roch pointed out in his article, the News & Record has published no data to back up their claims that the higher costs of posting legal notices in newspapers is more effective or a better deal for the taxpayers.
Let this be a lesson, Folks. When the local status-quo pushes an issue it is usually because they've something they don't want you to know.
Trudy Wade didn't dream up the newspaper bill. Keith Brown pushed it for years and years at his blog Triad Watch under the tag, public notice, where he has written dozens of articles on it. And Keith is well known to the entire News & Record staff who blamed the entire thing on Trudy Wade and never once mentioned Keith all in an effort to twist the story.
Yes, it will be bad for local newspapers but is it the responsibility of taxpayers to forever subsidize newspapers that cannot be trusted with the truth?
