02/27/2025
White Lines . . .
House Bill 368: An existential threat to The Woodford Sun
Scott White
Managing Editor
Just when you think things are turning around. . .
The Kentucky General Assembly is considering House Bill 368, which, if passed into law, would pose a very real threat to the Sun’s ability to stay open. We need your help. Please call or email Sen. Amanda Mays Bledsoe, R-Lexington, and Rep. Dan Fister, R-Versailles, and ask them to vote “NO” on this bill.
Let me explain.
As many of you know from two prior columns by me and one by good friend, book author and Midwegian Bob Rouse, we here at the Sun have been laser-focused on saving this county’s 156-year-old voice from extinction. This is not crying wolf—community newspapers in Kentucky and around the country have been failing at a steady rate.
The Sun has not turned a profit since 2015. We are a bare-bones staff. Even so, our publisher Ben Chandler is committed to keeping this newspaper locally owned, locally focused and open. We are Woodford County’s sole source of hard news, features, community doings, local sports and you name it . . . everything we print is relevant to anyone living or doing business in or enjoying Woodford County.
Even being small, I am proud of the job we do. And based on the calls, texts, emails and comments from people when I’m out in public, most folks agree.
I can’t tell you how many folks have stopped me to say, “You guys can do it. We need the Sun. Don’t sell or close. The Sun is indispensable.”
Many of you have renewed your subscriptions for two years. Many seniors ignore the discount price and pay the full amount. Some of you have increased the number of times you advertise.
Thank you.
And, according to data from the Institute of Rural Journalism and Community Issues, there are a lot of you out there supporting the Sun.
The institute reports that out of 120 community newspapers in Kentucky, the Sun is 30th in community pe*******on at 29%, which represents the percentage of residents who read the paper. This means a third of this county’s population regularly reads The Woodford Sun.
This percentage was calculated by totaling the average in-county mail and single-copy sales numbers on our annual postal statement and dividing that total by the number of housing units, a datum that is updated annually by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Thank you.
And though the paper’s advertising revenues are not what they were even five years ago, they are improving.
You have also accepted without complaint an increase in the cost from 75 cents to a dollar per paper. Subscriptions, both new and renewals, are up.
Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU!
Going forward, we think the only viable solution to reach and maintain fiscal health is to convert to a nonprofit to access grants and accept contributions. The Sun is modeling this nonprofit status from examples in other states that have succeeded on this path. The Sun is in the final steps of this process.
Now, about HB 368.
HB 368, sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, and awaiting a vote in the full House, would allow local governments and others to remove legal notices from newspapers and place them on government websites. These are things like notices of meetings, proposed ordinances, master commissioner sales, estate filings and utility rate increases – just turn to our classified page and you will see some of them.
We don’t make a ton of money off of these, but they do account for a portion of our revenue. The possible loss of this, now, is a real threat. Sadly, many of our colleagues around the state are in even worse shape, where the loss of this revenue would put them out of business.
Though I get and hear the criticisms of the media, the reality is do you really want to live in a country without a free and independent press? Let me be more specific . . . should residents of Letcher County have to live without the Pulitzer award-winning Mountain Eagle? Or, Georgetown without the News-Graphic? Or, Frankfort without the State Journal? Or, Versailles and Midway without The Woodford Sun?
That said, it’s important to also remember that there are public policy reasons for governments to be required to publish certain matters in the newspaper and not just on government websites. Placing legal notices in newspapers increases transparency, holds public officials accountable – and decreases the risk of mischief.
When a legal ad is placed in a newspaper, it is dated and cannot be changed after the fact. In addition, it is placed on a website managed by the Kentucky Press Association where all legal notices in Kentucky can be found – kypublicnotices.com. When the Sun publishes a legal notice, it is in the paper, on our website and in the digital paper.
HB 368 seeks to have entities including county and city governments place public notices on their own websites, yet many have only one employee, if any, and often can’t even keep their current websites updated.
As good as the new sites run by the City of Versailles and Woodford County are, they are managed by just one or maybe two employees who have myriad other responsibilities. Is it reasonable to expect a local government, even as good and responsible as we have, to make sure required legal notices are posted and maintained in a timely fashion?
I suspect some of you know who Al Cross is . . . he made his name as both a state government reporter for the Courier-Journal where he became a columnist and then as the executive director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky, where he just recently retired from. Al is also considered one of the most informed, keen and prescient observers of Kentucky politics and is a regular on KET’s election night coverage. Al is also a good friend of mine and Ben’s, a very good friend and subscriber of the Sun and someone whom I regularly solicit for his views and thoughts on how we operate.
Here is what Al recently emailed me about HB 368: “All in all, (last week’s edition of the Sun) was a newspaper that could be an excellent vest-pocket argument against HB 368, which would lead to the death of some Kentucky newspapers by allowing local governments to post public notices on their websites instead of local newspapers – which once got maybe 7 to 8 percent of their revenue from public notices but are now likely in the neighborhood of 20 percent.” Well, we aren’t 20 percent, but it’s north of 7 percent.
Please help us. Please call and email Sen. Mays Bledsoe at 502.564-8100 and [email protected]; and, Rep. Fister also at 502.564-8100 and [email protected]. If you know any other legislators, give them a shout too.
And . . . thank you.
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