Generation Z to the rescue: Harvard grads’ startup company on public notices designed to save lifeblood of newspapers - Entrepreneur Generations

By Buck Ryan
University of Kentucky School of Journalism and Media

CHICAGO—Just when newspapers are suffering from declining circulations and plunging ad revenues, lawmakers in several states and even the Federal Communications Commission are going for the jugular to try to cut advertising income from public notices.

As the legislative dust-ups rise and fall in places like Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas, two young bloods are riding to the rescue, fresh out of Harvard University.

They hope to pick up new clients beyond their Kansas base for their startup company, enotice, which is described as "a digital platform intended to make public notices more accessible online while preserving print publication of the notices."

A public notice, also known as a legal notice or a legal ad, is required under law to be published in a local newspaper of record to let citizens know about proposed government actions before they become law or legal proceedings, such as foreclosures, probate and estate actions.

Legislators have attempted to cut the costs to the government for the public notice advertising by having the notices listed on government websites.

Kevin King

"We just can’t let this industry die—that’s not good enough," says entrepreneur Kevin King as his face glows flush with outrage. He grew up in Texas as a kid appreciating the importance and value of newspapers by reading the Dallas Morning News with his father.

King, 25, says his journalism experience is nothing compared with the storied history of the startup’s founder and CEO, Jake Seaton, whose family newspaper, The Manhattan Mercury in Kansas, dates back five generations.

Seaton, 24, uses the words "broken" and "ludicrous" to describe what’s happening with public notices.

Seaton and King spoke at a Monday afternoon session here at the 134th annual gathering of the Inland Press Association and the 117th meeting of the Southern Newspaper Publishers Association. The official name of the two merged organizations, America’s Newspapers (newspapers.org), was announced Sunday evening.

Jake Seaton

Seaton told a story about the purchase of a $130,000 townhouse for one dollar at auction by the only bidder—the county clerk who placed the public notice ad announcing the foreclosure in a newspaper that wasn’t the official newspaper of record.

Seaton invited King to be part of a 10-member team trying to solve the puzzle of preserving public notices as the domain of newspapers through computer science.

Conference organizers framed their session this way: "Protecting public notice revenue is a never-ending battle. Over the past decade, an average of 150 proposals have been introduced per year by state and local officials to change public notice laws. Often, these legislative efforts threaten the vital role newspapers play in distributing notice to their communities."

They were recommended as speakers at the conference by Richard Karpel, a nationally known watchdog at the Public Notice Resource Center, which reported this good news toward the end of the 2019 legislative season: "Bills were introduced in at least ten states this year that would eliminate newspaper notice and move it to government websites. But with eight of those legislatures already adjourned and the two others set to wrap things up within the next three weeks, not a single one of those bills has even made it out of committee."

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2APOQqq Generation Z to the rescue: Harvard grads’ startup company on public notices designed to save lifeblood of newspapers - Entrepreneur Generations

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