North Carolina recently allowed growing suburb Apex, as well as some other towns to loosen advertising requirements for public notices. Such moves, being pushed by governments at state and local levels in order to cut costs, will further test newspapers already struggling for advertising revenue, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

City and county governments believe that change of medium for public notification reflects both a change in readership to online and the need to save money in current economic conditions. Apex was able to save $13,000 by listing notices of rezoning requests and major land development plans on the town's Web site instead of print advertising in the local newspaper.

"This was good for us for this year, that we didn't have to include that advertising cost in our budget," said Keith Weatherly, mayor of the Raleigh suburb of 35,000, which has an annual budget of $27 million.

Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Florida and Arizona all had bills proposing the change of public notification enter the legislature.

The federal government is also interested in the cost cutting abilities of the notification change. The Obama administration, noting a change in reader patterns, said it would save $6.7 million over five years by publishing the federal Asset Forfeiture program online rather than in newspapers.

Official proceedings, such as any change to tax law, new legislation, foreclosures and public meetings, are required by state law to be made public to citizens. Newspapers have been the traditional place of publication for these notices. Shannon Martin, an Indiana University journalism professor, noted the benefits of newspaper publication as their accessibility, low cost, documented list of subscribers and their preservation for archive purposes.

The move to public notice publication on the Internet at the taxpayer's expense, first saw support in 2002. Now as almost all states negotiate the idea, Tonda Rush, the head of the Public Notice Resource Center, fears the impact on newspapers.

Publishers assert that newspapers are an essential pillar of democracy and their publication of public notices is vital to this role. The same publishers also fear the loss of another base of advertising revenue, according to the Washington Post.

Last year newspaper advertising revenues fell by 17.7 percent, lead by a 29 percent decline in classified spending, according to the Newspaper Association of America. And although public and legal notifications make up just a minor portion of classifieds they represent the most stable of the four classified categories, dropping just 4.3 percent.

In North Carolina, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People came out in support of newspapers, stating that online only publication will leave poor and rural communities uninformed due to limited Internet access

"People in my community still heavily read the newspaper. They may not be able to afford Internet access, but they can afford 50 cents for the newspaper," said the Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina branch of the NAACP. "These are not want ads to buy a car. Many times these notices are about issues like zoning than can affect people in the long term."

Beth Grace, executive director of the North Carolina Press Association, also warned of the lack of visitors to government websites. She said municipal Web sites have far fewer viewers than newspaper sites. "Public notices need to be where the public notices," Grace said.