First of all, I reject your premise that this article is a conflict of interest. If the county is not following the law that is definitely a story that should be covered. The results of not following the law can result in significant cost to taxpayers.
Your next point that newspapers are fading has some validity. Local coverage is not fading. Our number of print subscribers has remained steady over the years. Our online site has hundreds of thousands of people reading millions of articles. The demand is there, although monitizing it is difficult at this time.
The county handling the notices digitally only raises potential issues. Why does public notice exist? Because in the past there were issues with the public being informed. Returning to the county handling the noticing without safeguards feels like a setup for failure.
The amount of money that our newspaper Hernando Sun makes off county notices is minimal because they have negotiated very low rates and require custom workflows. We do make money off other legal notices.
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