Justice Department Abandoning Newspaper Advertising

By: E&P Staff The U.S. Justice Department intends to stop buying newspaper ads to publish legal notices on property forfeiture, according to a list of budget cuts released Thursday.

Phasing out the adverising will save $6.7 million over the next five years, the department said.

The Justice Department is required to publish legal notices when it attempts to get court permission to seize private property, and has long taken out newspaper ads for that purpose. But it also created a Web site, www.forfeiture.gov, to give notice of court actions.

In the White House budget announcement -- reported first by Brent Kendall of Dow Jones Newswires-- the department said it would continue to advertise in newspapers for a while, but would eventually only use the Web site.