The "public notices" pages are an often-obscure part of this and many other publications — but in community-involved states like New Mexico, they can be the most important part of the paper.

It's there in the small print that our governments, going back to our nation's beginnings, have been obligated to let you know what they're up to. Governments being governments, and legalities being legalities, they can be hard to read — and harder figuring out. But concerned citizens who take the time to do it are rewarded with a treasure trove of information crucial to the state and its communities.

Because they demand close reading, the public notices belong in newspapers. But now, politicians, at the urging of the broadcasting business, propose having them read on the radio.

This would be truly challenging to listeners: narratives loaded with four-bit words, endless numbers and governmental codes.

The start of legal-ad reading would be most listeners' cue to change stations. As for those who really want to know what, for example, the planning-and-zoning commission will be doing at its next meeting, broadcast notices would be frustrating: Did they say "Article Four, Section Three, Subsection 16," or "Article Three, Section Sixteen?" Following broadcast news is difficult enough, with all the distractions of modern living; trying to make sense of broadcast legalisms would drive the best of legal scholars out of their minds.

Sen. David Ulibarri, D-Grants, sponsor of a memorial "providing alternative venues for publication of legal notices," offers all kinds of misinformation on its behalf, including a claim of radio's "reach advantage" and newspapers' "diminished reach."

In our state's larger cities, newspapers might have lost some of Sen. Ulibarri's perceived "reach" — but so have broadcasters as cable channels multiply and listeners turn to iPods and Internet radio.

In communities across New Mexico, however, the many excellent weekly papers are holding their own, or even growing in circulation. And those community papers are where public notices are a big part of the news, while broadcasting is mostly entertainment.

The senator should favor an informed public — which, as he knows, is key to an effective democracy. What his memorial would encourage is a less-informed public: Without being able to read public notices in the paper, New Mexicans would be kept in the dark.

Newspapers are well aware that many of our readers, current and erstwhile, rely more and more on the Web for their information. For that reason, the New Mexico Press Association, at no cost to the public, puts most public notices from around the state on a single Web site, www.publicnoticeads.com/NM, as soon as they're published.

But the Internet isn't enough — especially in rural areas where only half the folks have it. Government should have a great interest in getting its information to the people — and with papers' paid-circulation figures there's readership our leaders can count on.

There's lots we like about radio — from The Forum on KSFR to the Metropolitan Opera on KHFM, from New Mexico music on KANW through Bobby Box's oldies on KABG and talk shows on KTRC AM to the Big I's country-and-western sound.

But biased as we may be, newspapers are our idea of where to read the public notices. Ulibarri's fellow senators surely must realize that — and so must he ...