Story by Debbie Blankenship
The Dec. 31, 2025 print edition of The Macon Telegraph marked the end of an era.
The six pages of classified ads were packed full of notices that included estate petitions, pending foreclosures, tax sales, a liquor license request, adoptions, and a name change.
This section also included a smaller notice at the bottom of 6B that the Telegraph would no longer be Macon-Bibb County’s “official organ of publication” — a designation that is spelled out in Georgia law and includes the kinds of actions that require a legal ad to be published.
“Legal advertising exists to protect a fundamental right — the right to notice. Whether it’s a court action, a property matter, or a public proceeding, both individuals and the community deserve to know what’s happening. That transparency is at the heart of why the legal organ designation matters,” said Bibb County Clerk of Superior Court Erica Woodford, who is one of three constitutional officers tasked with designating the legal organ.
Christi James is a Macon attorney who specializes in probate and family law. She said having an effective and efficient legal organ “ensures that my clients are in compliance with Georgia’s statutory notice requirements.” For example, she said an estate representative is required to publish a notice to creditors within 60 days of their appointment and while they can personally reach out to known creditors, the legal notice requirement provides accountability and transparency for unknown creditors. Those ads have to run multiple times.
This means the legal ad process can be very labor intensive, and if the legal organ doesn’t run the ads accurately or in the sequence spelled out in the law, it can delay and derail court proceedings and government decisions.
“Without a legal organ to publish the requisite notices, it would be next to impossible to satisfy the law’s requirements in probating or administering a person’s estate,” James said of her work. “This would lead to title, to real estate or vehicles being tied up and unable to be lawfully transferred, sold, rented, etc., leading to neglect, real, and personal property taxes going unpaid, and ultimately, vandalism and blight.”
Woodford, who was elected Clerk in 2012, said The Telegraph had been the county’s legal organ since the 1800s. Georgia law gives responsibility for designating the legal organ to each county’s Clerk of Superior Court, the Probate Judge, and the Sheriff, who are all considered constitutional officers.
Woodford said last year the officers discussed a change.
“There were many challenges and issues, and of course, I don’t necessarily want to go into all of those issues or challenges,” she said. “But for us to change an organ that we’ve had for 200 years, there had to be some challenges because this isn’t something that counties take lightly.”
Under state law, the official organ has to publish in print in the county at least weekly for two continuous years, have paid circulation of at least 1,500 copies for a county the size of Macon-Bibb, and have no more than 75% of the content be advertising.
“The ad has to run in a physical, printed paper,” Woodford said. “So until the legislature changes the law, we have to follow it and do the best we can with the system we have in place.”
Last June, Woodford said the officers sent out a proposal to “all media outlets that were known to us” and requested the things that were required by statute. While the law requires her office, the probate court, and sheriff to be involved, they included Tax Commissioner Wade McCord, who also is a constitutional officer and is responsible for notices relating to things like taxation, foreclosures, and other property seizures.
They received back two responses — one from The Monroe Reporter, which launched in Monroe County in 1972 and began publishing a Macon edition in April 2023, and the other from The Macon Melody, which launched in June 2024. The Monroe-Macon Reporter was selected as the new legal organ, and the county began advertising that the change would be effective Jan. 1, 2026.
“It is a high honor and serious responsibility to be chosen as the legal organ of Bibb County,” said Will Davis, who is publisher of the Monroe-Macon Reporter. “It only happened because the people of Bibb County have supported us with their readership and subscriptions. We still have a lot to learn, but we are working hard to handle all the duties correctly.”
The law doesn’t require a periodic review or affirmation of the designation — just the requirements for being the legal organ and changing the organ, and Woodford said there are no plans to review the new designation “any time in the immediate future.”
“The Monroe-Macon Reporter was not an interim legal organ. They were designated as the legal organ,” she said.
When Woodford took office in 2013, Macon, like many cities, still had a daily print newspaper. In recent years, The Telegraph began publishing two days a week and delivering papers through the mail. Both the Macon Melody and the Monroe-Macon Reporter publish once a week and also deliver the paper to subscribers through the mail.
“Over the past 14 years, we’ve seen the decline or reduction in the number of printed papers, so you don’t get a daily paper anymore,” Woodford said. “Because people are more tech savvy and more digital, and there’s been an increase in digital circulation versus the actually physical paper in hand, and that’s caused a reduction in the (newsroom) manpower.”
Woodford said the reduction in manpower at The Telegraph meant they no longer had a person in Macon to call when there were issues with an ad or the invoicing.
“There’s no human here,” Woodford said. “So when you’re emailing a general email, you’re likely to get lost in the shuffle … it’s just better to have a human.”
Georgia’s legal organ law has been amended as recently as 2024, but the requirement to publish the notices in print has not changed.
“This is just an example of the law not necessarily catching up with the time because we have to run these ads in the physical paper,” Woodford said. “Hopefully, the law will evolve to reflect how people actually consume information today. Digital platforms — our websites, our social media — could be far more effective vehicles for legal notice than print alone.”