Tag: Steve Waldman

Omnibus spending bill reportedly omits assistance for local news

The U.S. Capitol. Photo (cc) 2013 by Mark Fischer.

The $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that’s making its way through Congress reportedly contains nothing to ease the local news crisis. An emailed news bulletin from the trade publication Editor & Publisher, citing unnamed sources, reported this morning that both the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA) and the Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA) have been excluded from the bill.

For those of you who don’t follow these issues obsessively, let me unpack this a bit.

The JCPA would allow an antitrust exemption for news organizations so that they could bargain collectively with Google and Facebook for a share of their advertising revenues. You often hear news executives complain that the giant platforms are republishing their content without paying for it. That is a serious distortion. On the other hand, there’s no doubt that Google and Facebook, which control about half the digital advertising market, benefit significantly from linking to and sharing news.

The LJSA would create three tax credits that would benefit local news organizations. The first would allow consumers to write off the cost of subscriptions. The second would provide a tax benefit to businesses for buying ads. The third would grant tax write-offs to publishers for hiring and retaining journalists. That last provision was included in President Biden’s Bill Back Better bill, which Senate Republicans, joined by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, killed last year.

The demise of the JCPA is not entirely bad news. I thought it might be worth giving it a try to see what the two sides might come up with. Still, there was a lot of merit to the argument made by critics like Chris Krewson, executive director of LION (Local Independent Online News) Publishers, that most of the revenues would be diverted to large legacy newspaper publishers — including those owned by corporate chain owners and hedge funds — rather than to community-based start-ups.

The LJSA, on the other hand, was more intriguing, even though it would also benefit legacy newspapers. For one thing, the tax credits could provide a real lifeline to small local news projects. For another, the third provision, for publishers, would reward the large chain owners only for good behavior — Gannett and Alden Global Capital could not tap into that credit if they keep laying off journalists.

I’m guessing that this is the end of the road for both proposals given that the Republicans will take over the House in the next few weeks. That’s not entirely a bad thing. As Ellen Clegg and I have found in our research at “What Works,” local news organizations across the country, from for-profit legacy newspapers to nonprofit digital start-ups, are finding innovative ways to continue serving their communities.

The economic challenges facing news organizations is real, but in many cases they can be managed with innovative thinking and committed local ownership.

Finally, here are a couple of “What Works” podcasts that will bring you up to speed.

Congress is talking once again about making Google and Facebook pay for news

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is a lead sponsor of the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. Photo (cc) 2019 by Gage Skidmore.

A bill that could force Google and Facebook to fork over billions of dollars to local news outlets has lurched back to life. The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, or JCPA, would allow publishers to negotiate as a bloc with the two giant tech platforms, something that would normally be prohibited because of antitrust concerns. The proposal would exclude the largest publishers and, as Rick Edmonds notes at Poynter Online, would lead to binding arbitration if the two sides can’t reach an agreement.

The legislation’s cosponsors in the Senate are Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and John Kennedy, R-La.; the House cosponsors are David Cicilline, D-R.I., and Ken Buck, R-Colo. That bipartisan support means the bill might actually be enacted. But is it a good idea?

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The premise on which the legislation is built is that Google and Facebook should pay fair compensation for repurposing the news content that they use. This strikes me as being much more straightforward with Google than with Facebook. Google’s mission is to index all the world’s knowledge, including journalism; Facebook is a social network, many of whose users post links to news stories. Facebook isn’t nearly as dependent on journalism as Google is and, in fact, has down-ranked it on several occasions over the years.

Google’s responsibility isn’t entirely clear, either. Yes, it links to news stories and publishes brief snippets. But it’s not a zero-sum situation — there’s no reason to believe that Google is depriving news publishers of traffic. It’s more likely that Google is pushing users to news sites and, with the rise of paywalls, may even be boosting subscriptions for local news outlets. Still, you could make a philosophical argument that Google ought to pay something because it benefits from having access to journalism, regardless of whether that deprives news outlets of any revenues.

A similar law in Australia has brought in $140 million, Edmonds reports. But critics have complained that the law’s main effect has been to further enrich Rupert Murdoch, still the leading press baron in his native country.

The JCPA should not be confused with the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, or LJSA, which would provide three tax credits for local news outlets — one for subscribers, who would get to write off news subscriptions on their taxes; one for advertisers; and one for publishers for hiring and retaining journalists. As Steve Waldman, chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition, recently told us on the “What Works” podcast, this last provision is especially powerful because it would provide an incentive to do the right thing even at bottom-feeding chains owned by Alden Global Capital and Gannett.

Despite bipartisan support, the LJSA ran aground last year when President Biden split off the publishers’ credit and added it to the doomed Build Back Better bill. Perhaps it will be revived.

Is either measure needed in order to revive local news? What Ellen Clegg and I have found in the course of reporting for our book-in-progress, also called “What Works,” is that many independent local and regional news organizations across the country, nonprofit and for-profit alike, are doing reasonably well without government assistance. Since both the JCPA and the LJSA would be time-limited, maybe it’s worth giving them a try to see what the effects will ultimately be. But neither one of them will save local news — nor is it clear that local news needs saving once you remove the dead hand of corporate chain ownership.

Steve Waldman talks about Report for America and his quest to save local news

Steve Waldman

On this week’s “What Works” podcast, Ellen Clegg and I talk with Steve Waldman, the president and co-founder of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on undercovered communities. Steve came up with the concept in 2014 and joined forces with The Ground Truth Project to launch RFA in 2017.

In the projects we’re reporting on for this podcast and for our book, “What Works: The Future of Local News,” we’ve run across a number of RFA corps members. They usually have a couple of years of experience but are relatively new to the business, although there are a few near retirement age, too.

Steve has a deep background in magazine journalism. He was national editor of U.S. News & World Report and a national correspondent for Newsweek. He went on to co-found a multifaith religion website, Beliefnet.com, which won a National Magazine Award. He is also founder and coordinator of the Rebuild Local News Coalition, and he’s crafted some interesting proposals for how government can help revitalize local journalism while preserving editorial independence.

I’ve got a Quick Take on the happy conclusion to a bizarre situation involving a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Last fall, Josh Renaud reported that a flaw in a database maintained by the state of Missouri allowed for public access to thousands of Social Security numbers. Incredibly, the state’s governor, Mike Parson, denounced Renaud as a “hacker” and a criminal investigation was begun. It was absolutely outrageous, and now Renaud has been recognized with a national freedom-of-the-press award.

And Ellen takes it all back about Ogden Newspapers, which purchased The Aspen Times late last year but has supressed coverage and prompted a number of staff resignations.

You can listen to our conversation here and subscribe through your favorite podcast app.

A conversation about local news and its effect on political coverage

Earlier this week I had a chance to take part in a panel discussion with some wicked smart people about the future of local news, sponsored by Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. The discussion was moderated by Josh Darr, an assistant professor at LSU and a recent guest on the “What Works” podcast. We were joined by:

  • Sarabeth Berman, CEO of the American Journalism Project.
  • Jessica Mahone, research director of the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media.
  • Steve Waldman, President and Co-Founder, Report for America.

Hope you’ll give it a look. My apologies in advance for the bad lighting, but you didn’t want to look at me anyway.

 

Bipartisan federal legislation would provide tax credits to ease the local news crisis

Bipartisan legislation has been introduced in Congress that would provide some government support for local news. The ubiquitous Steve Waldman, the co-founder of Report for America and the chair of the Rebuild Local News Coalition, writes that the bill “would provide more help for local news than any time in about a century, yet it’s done in a very First-Amendment-friendly way.”

Waldman has the details, so I’ll just hit the highlights:

  • It would provide a tax credit of up to $250 each year for subscriptions or donations to local news — a measure Waldman has been talking about for quite a while.
  • Payroll tax credits would be available to publishers for hiring or retaining journalists.
  • Small businesses would receive a tax credit for advertising in local news outlets.

The bill, known as the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, is co-sponsored by Reps. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., and Ann Kirkpatrick, D-Ariz.

My reservation about this legislation is that would benefit chain-owned papers as much as it would independent papers and websites. I guess that’s OK, and it’s hard to imagine how to cut out the corporations while keeping benefits for independents. But I’m concerned that the legislation might freeze in place the advantage already held by corporate-owned legacy outlets without providing them much in the way of an incentive to improve their journalism.

On the other hand, I agree with Waldman that the legislation is ingenious in the way that it would provide government support for local news without making news organizations dependent on currying favor with the very people they’re covering. Another smart move: benefits would be limited to organizations with fewer than 750 employees, which would leave out the large national newspapers.

Overall, it’s a pretty interesting step that might help ease the local news crisis. I don’t see this as a comprehensive solution, but even a boost on the margins would help.

Local news as infrastructure

Report for America co-founder Steve Waldman is suggesting that a plan he’s been touting to help the beleaguered local news business be included in whatever infrastructure bill comes out of Congress.

Writing recently for Poynter Online, Waldman said that each American should be given a $250 tax credit either to buy a subscription to a local news source or to make a donation to a nonprofit news organization. He notes that Sen. Maria Cantwell, the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has come out in favor of $2.4 billion to bolster local news. Waldman writes:

Local news is, in fact, the civic infrastructure of democracy.

But let’s get less metaphorical. If the health of democracy wasn’t reason enough, there’s another, practical reason why help for local news should be part of the infrastructure bill. If the government is going to spend a trillion or so dollars on public works projects, we need local watchdog reporters to make sure the money is spent well.

Waldman has been promoting the $250 tax credit for some time, and he says it has some bipartisan support. But the idea of rolling it into the infrastructure bill seems worth exploring as a way of actually making it a reality.

Waldman discussed his Poynter piece with Brian Stelter last weekend on CNN’s “Reliable Sources.” He’s also involved in an organization called the Rebuild Local News Coalition, comprising more than 4,000 local newsrooms (up from about 3,000 at the time of the Poynter piece) and journalism advocacy organizations.

Is government-funded local journalism an idea whose time has come?

U.S. Treasury. Photo (cc) 2007 by Adam Fagen.

The local news crisis has some people talking seriously about government funding for journalism. The idea isn’t entirely new. Nonprofit news organizations enjoy tax benefits, and public broadcasters receive some federal money. As I recently reported for GBH News, federal pandemic relief actually meant that 2020 was a better year than 2019 for some media outlets.

But what comes next? Local media are being squeezed on one side by technology and on the other by avaricious chain ownership. Ideally, you would want to find ways to help independent news organizations without rewarding the corporations and hedge funds that are cutting newsrooms without conscience. But it’s hard to imagine how you would draw distinctions between the two.

Moreover, direct government assistance raises serious questions about how journalism can play its traditional watchdog role if it’s receiving money from the watchdog. It strikes me that it would be a hard sell with taxpayers, too. Nevertheless, some smart people are thinking about how we can provide communities with the news and information they need in an era of market failure.

One idea was offered recently by Osita Nwanevu in The New Republic. Under the headline “The Next Infrastructure Bill Should Save Local Journalism,” Nwanevu writes:

Really, the administration’s push for a more capacious definition of infrastructure should encourage us to think even more creatively about what else should qualify for the next package as it takes shape. Can it seriously be argued, for instance, that access to the news isn’t an important feature of any well-functioning society? We all depend upon a steady stream of accurate information; obviously, we owe much of our awareness that America’s infrastructure is crumbling to the work of journalists who helped alert policymakers and the public to the problem in the first place.

Nwanevu notes that the $3 per capita we currently spend on public broadcasting is a pittance compared to the $90 that is the average in many other developed countries. He also writes favorably of ideas that Andrew Yang put forth during his presidential campaign for a fellowship program for journalists and a “Local Journalism Fund” to help news outlets transition to sustainability. But Nwanevu is also thinking bigger than that, calling for $30 billion to $40 billion over the next 10 years.

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I’m not sold, though, mainly because Nwanevu only half-defines the problem. He cites the challenges posed by technology and the rise of Google and Facebook, but he makes no mention of corporate ownership, which has made the crisis much worse than it needed to be. With chains like Gannett and hedge funds like Alden Global Capital bleeding their newspapers dry, there is no money left over to invest in the future. Meanwhile, a number of independent news organizations across the country, for-profit and nonprofit, are doing a good job of serving their communities. We need more.

The Columbia Journalism Review recently published a conversation with the longtime media reformer Robert McChesney; Steve Waldman, the co-founder of Report for America; and the economist Andrea Prat. All of them offer their own ideas for providing some public assistance for news, with McChesney’s proposal for a “Green New Deal for journalism” being the most ambitious. He describes the challenge this way:

This is the public policy imperative facing the United States regarding journalism in 2021: we need the funding to support independent, competitive, professional local news media. That money must come from the government, but we cannot allow the government to pick and choose who gets the money. The policy must be like the postal subsidy of newspapers: large enough to get the job done, and it cannot discriminate on the basis of ideology or political viewpoint. Censorship is entirely unacceptable. It must allow the people to make of it what they will, and trust them in the process of self-government.

So how would McChesney accomplish that? Through elections at the county level (that wouldn’t really work in Massachusetts, which is pretty much county-free) to elect boards that would distribute between $32 billion and $35 billion a year over a five-year period to fund local news and foster the development of new nonprofit organizations. It’s pretty breath-taking, and McChesney admits there’s no support for such a plan in Washington at the moment. But the value McChesney has always brought to the table is that he thinks big and gives us a chance to wrap our minds around larger possibilities.

Waldman’s plan, by contrast, already has a great deal of support on Capitol Hill: a $250 refundable tax credit to pay for local news subscriptions or to donate to nonprofit media outlets. He would like to see a tax credit for hiring and retaining journalists as well, which is something currently being done in Canada.

Prat, though, argues that the tax credits would mainly benefit large news organizations, whereas “the most urgent problem is not the overall information level but its distribution across the population.” A voucher system, he says, “would give more access to information-poor people.”

So, has the moment come for government-funded news? My own guess is probably not, at least if we’re talking about the ambitious proposals put forth by Nwanevu and McChesney. But some modest assistance aimed at helping news organizations make the transition to a sustainable future might well be a good idea.

Waldman’s tax credits and Prat’s vouchers could be seen as extensions of the help we already provide through nonprofit tax incentives. And surely we can provide more funding for public media while broadening the definition to include community-based journalism.

Everything needs to be on the table.