Enjoy the holidays, but get ready for legislative session

ANALYSIS By DONNIS BAGGETT, Texas Press Association

AUSTIN — It’s a busy season for the newspaper folk who have your back on the battleground of Texas politics. And we need your help.

With the opening gavel of the legislative session still weeks away, we’re already up to our helmet straps from a blizzard of pre-filed legislation. Not surprisingly, several legislators have already filed bills calling for the end of governmental public notices in newspapers.

These bills come around every legislative session, and it gets tougher every time to defeat them. It won’t get any easier this session. There are four reasons for this:

1. The “nobody reads newspapers any more” mantra that we’ve heard so often over the past several election cycles. 

2. The growing number of young legislators who dramatically lift their cell phones to announce “This is where I get my news. Why should taxpayer money go to support newspapers?”

3. Cities, counties and school districts using taxpayer money for dues to state associations that lobby against newspaper notice and other policies that hold local governments accountable.

4. Political candidates’ cynical and destructive portrayal of “the media” as corrupt tools of the extremist wing of one party or another. 

Based on the past several sessions, we expect a dozen or more anti-newspaper notice bills to be filed in the 89th Texas Legislature. Some of these bills will never see the inside of a committee room, but others will be granted hearings. Your TPA troops will battle them with every ounce of energy and with all the resources we have.

We’ve been in this fight for a long time, and we’re pretty good at it. But the cold reality is this: we’ve been able to keep the enemy at bay only because our TPA members have fought right alongside us.

TPA doesn’t make political contributions and we don’t do endorsements. But we do have members who buy ink by the barrel, paper by the ton and bandwidth by the gigabyte. 

Our members are a formidable asset, and we need you to double down on your involvement this session.

Retirements, career changes and newspaper closings have thinned the ranks of TPA’s volunteer force in the past couple years. We still have battle-hardened newspaper veterans who help with calls and emails and testimony, but we need newer members to join the fight as well. Here’s how you can do that:

1. Get to know your legislators. Every newspaper leader in Texas should have the ear of the House and Senate members who represent them. If they don’t know you, how can they possibly know how important public notices are to your newspaper and its readers? Cultivating these relationships could be as important to the survival of your paper as landing new advertising accounts.

2. Have a candid conversation with your legislator before the session begins, and follow up often. Make sure they know you’re counting on them to protect local newspapers. Assure them your paper is still relevant in the community —  that voters rely on your newspaper for credible local information, and they rightfully expect local officials to place their notices in the local paper and not solely on a government website. Ask if you can count on them to support local newspapers and the citizens who count on you. Then swap cell numbers with each other, because you’ll need to remind them of these things when a public notice bill is in play.

3. Make sure your legislator knows that your newspaper exists not only on paper, but in cyberspace — that you also distribute local news, viewpoints and public notices via your website and social media. Be sure they see that your notices are accessible outside your website’s paywall. Make them understand that all this credible news and information doesn’t get to their screen by osmosis — and that it’s not cheap to produce.

4.  Make sure you upload public notices promptly to the statewide site managed by TPA. Not only is it state law, but failing to do so will damage our ability to defend keeping notices in newspapers. 

5. Communicate often with your readers in columns or editorials. Make sure they realize why their local paper is such an important part of the community. Be clear with them that their newspaper needs their readership, their business and their political support to survive. Help them understand the void that would result if your paper wasn’t there to cover hometown civic meetings, business news, sports and features. Ask them to join you in pushing legislators to protect their local paper, not persecute it.

6. When TPA asks for your help, say yes. We know how busy you are, so we don’t make these requests lightly. But there are times when your voice can be the difference maker when your legislator is about to cast an important vote. Don’t let the mayor or county judge or school board president be the only local voices the lawmaker hears regarding public notices. You can bet the state associations of these local governments are coaching them to bend their representative’s ear.

We hope you’ll ponder these things as you enjoy a warm fire and nip of nog this holiday season. As you ponder, consider this timeless quote from an avid newspaper fan named Thomas Jefferson:

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

If that quote and the nog don’t light your fire, then your wood’s too wet. If they do, then welcome to the front line in January.

Merry Christmas.