Paso Robles dumping the SLO Tribune for the New Times

June 19, 2024

By KAREN VELIE

Paso Robles is dumping the SLO Tribune and selecting the New Times as its paper of choice for public notices, in a financial gut punch to the Tribune.

While not the most exciting content, public notices provide a significant revenue stream to news sources. Governments are required to inform their constituents of what they are doing through these small-print legal notices.

In the past, the City of Paso Robles published its notices in the Tribune. But with the Tribune’s shrinking paper publication days and issues with submission deadlines, Paso Robles will publish most notices in the New Times beginning July 1, according to city staff.

In 2017, then newly elected San Luis Obispo County Supervisor John Peschong looked at the cost of advertising public notices in the Tribune compared to the New Times and discovered the Tribune was almost double the cost. He then successfully pushed the county to stop working with the Tribune and publish its public notices in the New Times.

Amid huge declines in advertising revenue, many U.S. newspapers depend on public notices to make ends meet. During the past 20 years,  more than 2,500, or a quarter of all newspapers in the United States, have folded.