As we celebrate joining together SNPA and Inland, it is worth at least a moment to honor the first principles of the newspaper industry that gave rise to both groups. And those, without a doubt, are freedom of the press and the parallel right to know and to distribute news.

Honoring those principles requires some reflection on the industry's singular role in building America's First Amendment foundation. And it is safe to say that SNPA's and Inland's member newspapers can fairly take credit for shaping the free speech and free press tradition of the republic like no other industry and, for that matter, like no other country on earth.

After winning an injunction in a groundbreaking federal court lawsuit to stop a local ordinance that effectively banned TMC distribution, Publisher Rufus Friday of McClatchy's Herald Leader in Lexington, Ky., returned to court on Dec. 7 to preserve the victory.

This time the Herald Leader and its courtroom counsel John Bussian were in Cincinnati before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals defending the Herald Leader against the City of Lexington's appeal from the May 2017 order granting the Herald Leader a preliminary injunction against enforcement of the city's new anti-TMC ordinance. That order marked the first time a federal court held that legislation making it too costly to distribute newspapers violates the First Amendment.

Fending off another attack by industry opponents in the Oct. 4 special session of the N.C. General Assembly, the North Carolina Press Association stopped an effort to presume all newspaper carriers in the state to be employees, subject carriers to state workers comp and unemployment insurance taxes, and create a new test for independent contractor status.

Far from the sky falling, North Carolina's legal advertising and independent contractor-newspaper carrier climate remains intact. The leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly acted responsibly, with encouragement from the North Carolina Press Association and many SNPA members, to leave N.C. law unchanged.

SNPA has launched a free Legal Hotline for members – (844) 804-2016 – to assist newspapers with a broad range of legal issues.

Hotline attorneys and CPAs will tackle questions about circulation, independent contractors, labor and employment law, taxes, finances and accounting, employment benefits, open records, libel and privacy, and other issues newspapers encounter.

The attorneys and CPAs who will take calls from SNPA member newspapers are the best in the business: The Bussian Law Firm PLLC, Fisher & Phillips, Way, Ray, Shelton & Co., P.C. and The Zinser Law Firm.