The status of newspaper notice in New Jersey was thrown into uncertainty when Advance Publications announced on Oct. 30 that early next year it plans to close a production facility and the print editions of several significant newspapers in the state, including the state’s largest paper, the Star-Ledger.
Although it isn’t clear how many local government units were using the three daily papers and one weekly newspaper that will cease publication in the wake of Advance’s announcement, the scale of the closure’s impact began to come into focus when rural Warren County filed a lawsuit seeking a new outlet for its notices. Warren County has been publishing its notices in the Star-Ledger even though the paper is based in Newark, which is located two counties and 63 miles from the county seat.
Warren County’s lawsuit seeks a court order making the Star-Ledger website, NJ.com, its new official publication. According to Advance, media analytics measurement company Comscore ranks NJ.com “as the #1 local news site in the country.”
The county is seeking relief even though Gannett’s Daily Record is its alternate official paper and qualifies under the state’s public notice statute to publish its notices. The county argues the Daily Record is ill-equipped to serve as its official newspaper because “its circulation is limited to 1,345 subscribers” and it reports on “only a minute slice of eastern Warren County.”
