RSS Feed |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Public notices online A longtime goal of the Georgia Press Association was met this month when public notices of the last of Georgia's 159 counties were published online at www.GeorgiaPublicNotice.com. The Web site now provides 100 percent coverage of public notices published in the legal organ newspapers of every county in the state. Anyone with Internet access can find a public notice from any Georgia county at the site. The Georgia newspaper industry can boast of providing citizens the widest possible access to public notices of any state in the nation. "This is a great milestone for all newspapers in Georgia, and more importantly for the citizens of Georgia," said GPA President Judy Fleming, general manager of the Early County News of Blakely. "That is a goal we set for the association, and it included a number of nonmember papers to achieve. This initiative really shows the commitment of the GPA to continued growth of all media in the state," said GPA Past President Burgett Mooney, publisher of the Rome News- Tribune. The Web site is a database of public notices - everything from adoptions to public hearings to probate and election notices and foreclosures and seizures - searchable by county, by map, by category or by keyword. It is free to all users. The GPA and the state's newspaper industry started the Web site more than four years ago as a way to increase access to public notices and to fight off potential legislative efforts to use third-party companies or government Web sites for publication of notices. Other states have seen similar efforts which would reduce access to the public. Several companies nationwide have mounted legislative lobbying and public relations campaigns to win the right to publish public notices. "A lot of people and newspapers didn't realize the danger of taking public notices out of community newspapers," Fleming said.
"All newspaper publishers in the state are committed to the protection of the most trusted brand in each community, the local newspaper," she said. "Newspapers understand the critical part they play in communities and are fully prepared to implement the use of new technology to continue the vital role they have as stewards of public notices."
|
for larger version       |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
