Editorials and Cartoons

Editorial: Who cares about public notices? You should.
Public notices, by their very nature, are local and only have value to the audience who live in the impacted area. The laws in most states require that the public notices printed in newspapers must also be posted to the newspaper’s website, so the right audience is reached in print and online. Plus, the most interested observers of a community and its government typically read the local newspaper; there are typically few or no other entities that provide news about the city and county. It is rare to find a local website with an audience more interested in the actions of their government than that of the local newspaper.

Let your state legislators know that you value being able to access notices in your newspaper and that they are worth the investment. There is a cost to keeping citizens informed, but the costs of not doing so are much higher!

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Google's monopoly isn't a game for newspapers

By Dean Ridings, CEO, America's Newspapers

Almost everyone uses Google in some way or another. It has become part of our lives, and Google has used this to its advantage. Google games the marketplace through search algorithms to its financial gain. The result is an uneven and often unfair playing field for small and local businesses. At a time when local businesses are struggling to overcome the impacts of COVID, the need to be able to compete fairly has never been greater.

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New class action lawsuit claims Google virtually controls every part of digital advertising chain

In addition to the three antitrust lawsuits brought against Google by the Justice Department and state attorneys general, several private publishers also filed suits against Google in December over its advertising and search practices.

John Bussian, a First Amendment lawyer who also handles predatory pricing problems for the newspaper industry, says these latest suits hold special relevance to publishers of America's Newspapers members. Bussian also serves as a member of the America's Newspapers Legal Affairs and Lobbying Committee.

"Two of the new suits filed by private publishers, seeking damages over and above the relief sought by the U.S. Department of Justice and the attorneys general in several states, bear close watching," Bussian said. "One in particular claims Google virtually controls every part of the digital advertising chain, and that publisher is ready to prove how that makes it impossible to compete."
Sweepstakes Today is one of the companies that is a party to one of those new class action lawsuits. Through its lawsuit, Sweepstakes Today said it is seeking to "remedy harm to digital publishers that make available and sell space on their website (or applications) to advertisers."

The suit says: "That harm is the direct result of Google’s efforts to expand its occupation and control of the online advertising market to the detriment of publishers, with which it competes to sell ad space. While it is most often thought of as a search engine, through aggressive expansion Google now owns at least 75 different consumer-facing products, many of which are used to serve digital ads. It is, by all accounts, a significant competitor for the sale of digital ad space. One product alone (YouTube) accounts for 20% of all display advertisements sold through the digital ad tech stack."

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