Is idea of shifting public notices off newspapers all about keeping secrets?

It is a concept I have heard so many times that I don’t know whom to attribute the idea to – If you want to keep something secret, you ought to just post it somewhere on the Internet.

SANGUINETTI: What else will she do?

Because there’s so much gobbledygook and garbage out there accumulated on assorted website that here’s a good chance no one will ever read your particular notice.

AFTER ALL, THERE’S so much other stuff to occupy the public attention. Probably stuff that’s so much more titillating than the boring, dry information that might have public significance, but just doesn’t compare to that piece about “80’s teen stars and what they look like now” some three decades later.

So excuse me if I don’t think much of the suggestion that Illinois law do away with the requirements that governments be required to publish public notices about upcoming activity in their local newspapers.

These people claim it would be so much more efficient to put notices on their own government websites. They also try to claim that the only people who have objections are the publishers of some of the dinkier newspapers in the state – for whom the revenue they get for publishing such ads can be a significant part of their income.

Which they wrongly try to portray as the state being forced to subsidize the press. A whole lot of hooey, if you ask me.

NOW I’LL BE the first to admit that while I try to read as many newspapers as possible and have been known to read some rather obscure parts of the paper, I rarely pay much attention to those legal notices that get published.

I doubt I’m alone. Requiring that the notices be published in the local papers probably isn’t the most efficient way to spread the word about what actions are upcoming at the local levels of government.

But that’s mostly because of the laziness of the public, many of whom wouldn’t pay close attention to their local happenings if the notices were right on Page One.
 

Would you rather read a legal notice, or see Demi's bikini shot

Those people, of course, will then complain that it’s the laziness of the press in not keeping them informed about the actions they didn’t known enough to ask about.

WHICH ALSO IS a drawback to finding out information on the Internet. Many people use search functions to try to find relevant copy to the issues that intrigue their curiosity.

But those search functions are so crude in the way they view things. They are ultimate evidence that computers are dumb – only as smart as the people who use them.

I can envision many instances where a government would post something in an obscure portion of their website and no one would ever notice it. Which is probably the real goal of this particular measure that was recommended by Lt Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti’s task force on government consolidation.

That, and perhaps she’s envisioning some sort of payback to the newspaper industry as a whole for all the smart-aleck reporter-types who think she’s a political and intellectual lightweight.

I REALLY THINK it would be too easy for governments to use their websites to hide information in part because of my own experiences as a reporter-type in using government websites to gain some of the bare information they offer now.

Government units like to use their websites to promote the summer festivals or announcements about changes in trash pickup. The idea of using them to let people know when public hearings are to be held or when contracts are up for consideration is something they would rather not bother with.

Heck, I know some governments that claim to post their City Council or Village Board agendas, but are as much as a year behind. Others can’t even be bothered to keep up pretenses. So say what you want about the idea of nobody reading legal notices in the newspaper – at least it’s an outside entity.

Do you really trust your local government to have that much say over telling you what they’re up to?

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Is Sun-Times censoring its readership? Or just weeding out the nit-wits?

The Chicago Sun-Times let it be known this weekend that they’re going to follow a trend a lot of newspapers have undertaken when it comes to their websites – you won’t be able to post anonymous comments any more at the end of stories published at suntimes.com.

Getting w/ the program on anonymous commentary

The newspaper says that the comments meant to give readers a chance to express their views instantly have become a, “morass of negativity, racism, hate speech and general trollish behaviors” that do no good.

NOT THAT PEOPLE won’t be able to let their views be known about the stories the Sun-Times chooses to publish.

Because like many other publications – including the Chicago Tribune – already do, their sites are connected to Facebook in ways that make it very easy for people to post links to the newspaper’s stories on their Facebook pages.

Then, people can easily post their responses on those pages, while also saying whether they “like” the story in question – which in no way means they actually approve of what was reported.

In fact, the Sun-Times let it be known that’s exactly what people can still do – connect to the newspaper’s content on Facebook and Twitter.

SO THE FACT that the nasty comments will no longer be directly attached to the Sun-Times stories themselves won’t stop them from being made. Plus, there will always be the possibility of someone else using a different website to attack the newspaper in some form.

I know that firsthand, because I do some work for one of the suburban-based daily newspapers – the Times of Northwest Indiana – which actually made the same move more than a year ago that the Sun-Times is undertaking now.

In fact, reading the Sun-Times’ statement about the elimination of Internet comments, I was struck by the similarity. The Sun-Times says its change is temporary, while a new method of permitting commentary to editorial content is devised.

That’s the same thing the Times said it would do, and has not done yet. Although it’s always possible that I’m the last to know of an impending change.

ALTHOUGH THE REAL point is that I don’t think the Times lost much of anything when it did away with the strings of comments that would accompany many stories – with it turning out that there were a few people who seemed to feel the need to make a hostile comment about everything.

And many of those comments often had nothing to do with the actual story itself, but were rather about personalities and someone’s need to take a pot shot at someone else.

Anonymously, of course!

Personally, I feel sorry for such people that they seem to have so little in their lives that they ranted more than a year ago that the Times was censoring their views, just as they’re now complaining that the Sun-Times is engaging in CENSORSHIP!!!!

WHICH IS NONSENSE. It is censorship if they create their own site and write hostile comments, and someone tries to shut them down. That is un-American, and I would defend them, no matter how stupid and trivial their comments actually were on their own sites.

This is a case of going onto someone else’s site, and trying to tell them what they MUST publish. If anything, I consider those anonymous commenters to be more akin to censors than anyone else.

But I’m not going to get too worked up over them. They’re going to find other places to go to make their hostile, mean-spirited and petty comments.

While the bulk of us will feel compelled to ignore them because, after all, we have lives!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Yes, I permit commentary here. I’m also pretty loose about what I permit. Stay away from the profanity, and I’ll permit just about anything – no matter how ridiculous it makes you seem for thinking that way.

Are those ideologues complaining about clogged healthcare websites part of the reason they’re clogged?

As someone who is self-employed, has experienced a lack of health insurance, and who will now have to use the procedures established by the Affordable Care Act, I am among those with a personal interest in all the stories that have emanated about how the websites meant to guide us through the process of gaining a health insurance policy are ridiculously flawed.

We'll be making a return trip when it's less crowded.

 

It’s slow. It's confusing. In some cases, people who spend significant amounts of time working their way through the process wind up being told they can’t get any information now and will have to try again later.

NONE OF THIS surprises me. Technological glitches are always likely to cause problems, particularly in the early days of something.

So while I took a quick look last week on Tuesday at the website (http://getcoveredillinois.gov/) created by Illinois state government, I didn’t really try to get any information or start the process on my behalf.

For one thing, the process that we’re in now in which we’re supposed to sign up for a health care plan will last six months. I do not plan to be one of those people desperately trying to find something in the final days of March 2014.

But I also realize that there is time – particularly since the policies that people wind up getting for themselves through the Affordable Care Act will not take effect until January 1.

I PROBABLY WILL be one of those individuals who waits a few weeks before trying to figure out what exactly my situation will be.

Maybe I’ll be the guy who’s filling out my applications while kids come a-knockin’ on my front door come Halloween! Or maybe I’ll find some early November day when I happen to be up ridiculously late.

Perhaps an application filed around 3 a.m. some day will come at a time when there won’t be so many people (relatively speaking) trying to get on the computer at once.

Also, I figure by then, things will start settling down. There won’t be the initial rush of people that always causes computer programs to crash (just remember how ridiculous it was to call up anything on the Internet in the morning and early afternoon hours of Sept. 11, 2001).

I SUSPECT THAT by showing some patience, I can avoid many of the problems. I also suspect that many people who are going to be in need of the federal government’s health care reform initiatives will do the same.

Now I don’t doubt that people who tried to get a head start on their applications last week experienced confusion.

A part of the reason I didn’t even try to do an application Tuesday was that I could see for myself that this has the potential to be a time-consuming process. And I detest anything that requires me to both mindlessly sit in front of a computer screen while also requiring me to provide sensitive (and personal) information.

That is a dangerous combination that could cause me to inadvertently do myself in!

ONE THING DOES bother me about the assorted bits of coverage that tried telling us how flawed the application was thus far. Many people claiming to be reporter-types (I suspect they’re more ideological blowhards – even the ones I know personally and sort of think of as being friends) went through the process to give a “first-hand” account of how mucked-up things were.

I wonder how much those ideologues wound up adding to the clutter – causing people who seriously need help in obtaining some form of health insurance to have troubles.

And considering how they were determined to write commentaries trashing the process, I’d question the legitimacy of anything they had to “report.”

They’re the ones who have been trashing health care reform initiatives for years, while also trying to justify the inactivity this past week of certain federal government agencies and programs by calling them a “slimdown.”

ALL THE WHILE ignoring the fact that so many people in our society lacking in health insurance does cause a serious drag on our society’s overall economy. It is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

While some people are acting these days as though they merely want to add to the cheap rhetoric that ensures nothing gets done!

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