Tech platforms have an obligation to save California’s local newsrooms | Opinion

In the past 25 years, one-third of California newsrooms have closed, and more than 65% of journalists have lost their jobs. Even the state’s flagship nonprofit digital newsroom, CalMatters, recently implemented layoffs. Potential tariffs on Canadian newsprint, the specter of federal public media funding cuts and Federal Communication Commission threats to California broadcasters will only deepen the crisis.

To help stop the bleeding in California newsrooms, last summer Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Google announced a public-private partnership to direct modest funding toward supporting local reporting. Tech platforms have captured the advertising profits that once sustained community newsrooms, and Google was just found by a federal court to have done so illegally as a monopoly. That deal was struck in lieu of passing bills requiring platforms to pay for their damage to local journalism.

We were each critical of the Google deal because the program doesn’t direct enough money toward revitalizing community news in California. Other technology companies like Meta and Amazon are left out. It’s a short-term framework. The creation of a state-backed 501(c)3 raises efficiency and governance complications, including creating a truly representative board and finding a public institution willing to host it. And the proposed funding excluded broadcasters, including public media and local news stations, which are a trusted source of news for many Californians, especially in emergencies like the recent Los Angeles wildfires.

Accordingly, the Google deal was almost universally criticized by the organizations representing California journalists. Nor has the framework been taken up by the state lawmakers in Washington, Oregon, Illinois and New York who have since introduced their own legislation to make tech platforms foot the bill for local reporting.

Wicks and Newsom brought some good elements: enlisting a tech company to help revive local news and targeting the funds toward the retaining and hiring of local journalists. However, the agreement can and must provide the foundation for long-term, meaningful improvement and should be enhanced with the following elements:

• Require the other platforms to pay their fair share for the damage they have caused the news ecosystem (Meta, Amazon, TikTok, Microsoft and other advertising giants should match Google’s contribution).
• Place Newsom’s pledge of state dollars into the base budget so it’s not a one-time deal.
• Make this voluntary public-private agreement permanent with a law change to minimize future political pressures on newsrooms and truly stabilize local news going forward.
• Distribute the revenue generated to news outlets, including broadcasters, as an employment tax credit, similar to how the state administers the Hollywood tax credit, in a content- and ownership-neutral way.

We believe these additions to the existing agreement would build a community news fund of around $125 million annually. The current proposal for the newsroom subsidy only provides first-year revenue of $45 million, which then drops to $20 million for the remaining four years of the agreement.

While the tech revolution has created many positive services and products, it also created tremendous collateral damage. Google, Meta and Amazon make profits of hundreds of billions of dollars a year from ad revenue that once supported the jobs of tens of thousands of community journalists. This has created information deserts in California, where there is zero news coverage, leading to a lack of oversight of elected leaders and the subsequent weakening of good government.

Elected leaders routinely require developers to “mitigate” potential damage to roads, schools and emergency services when they build new projects. It is no different to ask the tech platforms to pay for the damage they have caused the newsrooms that serve our communities.

Their contribution under our proposal would be budget dust in their vast revenue portfolio but a true democracy-saver for the people of California. The Legislature should affirm the Newsom, Wicks and Google deal in law with a proportional obligation on the other platforms, along with a distribution model that minimizes political interference. That will be an agreement that preserves independent community news and the democracy it supports.

This story was originally published April 22, 2025 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Tech platforms have an obligation to save California’s local newsrooms | Opinion."