TPA posts strong legislative session working to benefit Texas newspapers

My how time flies when you’re having fun! The first half of 2025 has flown by! I want to thank each of you for allowing me to serve as your TPA president. This organization has great leadership, a great board and most importantly an enthusiastic, engaged, and excited membership!

By BILL PATTERSON, TPA President 2024-25

The entire TPA staff deserves a big “thank you” for all they do for our organization and Texas newspapers. Thanks to Mike, Joel, Fred, Donnis, Sue, Stephanie, Priscilla, Candace, and Joanna.

I want to thank the board and the executive committee for their help this year. I also want to give Lisa Chappell a shout out as she steps into the president’s role.

I hope most of you are planning to attend the annual convention this month in Denton. Mike Hodges and the team have worked hard to put a great agenda together. Our time together will be filled with relevant topics, great speakers, plenty of time for roundtable discussions and most importantly networking with fellow publishers.

As you’ve seen on the agenda, we have a good amount of time set aside for roundtable discussions. While we have selected some topics, I would ask that you make some notes of what you would like to discuss as well. What is keeping you up at night? I know we will have some robust discussions, especially as I have been watching the numerous emails between members on all sorts of topics this last year.

I would be remiss if I did not allow an update from Donnis Baggett as the session wraps up. Donnis is an unsung hero. He and Mike spend an incredible amount of time reading thousands of bills and making the rounds at the capital. When he has called on members, you have responded. I want to give a big shout out to Donnis and fellow TPA members for your support.

We had another strong session. We stopped all sweeping attempts to weaken or eliminate newspaper public notice requirements overall. We also stalled most smaller-scale bills that would weaken or eliminate specific notices. However, we lost the battle to preserve requirements for newspaper notices of law enforcement sales of confiscated and unclaimed property, and newspaper notices of unclaimed towed vehicles being sold to collect towing fees.

Meanwhile, lawmakers passed a number of bills that actually added new requirements for our newspaper notices. Hopefully these will make up for the two types of notices we lost.

Among TPA’s most important wins was passage of SB 1062/HB 3782, which allows a newspaper in a one-newspaper county to maintain its eligibility for paid public notices should it become economically necessary to eliminate its print edition and convert to digital-only circulation. This can keep a small newspaper alive, and prevent its community from becoming a “news desert” like we hear so much about.

Another major victory for TPA and our allies was the successful defense of the Texas Citizens Participation Act, often referred to as the anti-SLAPP law. The 14-year-old TCPA helps newspapers and all others who exercise their First Amendment rights to defend themselves against meritless nuisance libel suits filed by well-heeled plaintiffs with deep pockets in retribution for coverage or comments that they disliked.

I think TPA has managed to have another successful legislative session because of the deep grassroots involvement of our membership. We can’t ever let down, or we’ll find ourselves wondering what happened to the good old days in Austin.

On a personal note, I wrapped up my 43-year career in May. This is the last official newspaper event of my career and I get to end it in Denton. 

I am most proud of my family who has served as owner or publisher for 80 of 122 years, the Denton Record-Chronicle has been a daily newspaper.

I have been working for the last five years to move us into the digital world. We have made a lot of progress, but like all of you, we have more to do!

Best wishes to each of you as you keep doing the work that is so important to our communities, state and nation. Please keep focused on serving your readers, continue to make necessary operational changes and find new ways to engage your audience.