Editorial: Can California save local news? The future of community, democracy is at stake

The coming election is a stark reminder of what California communities lose when local news outlets shrink or shutter. Sure, there will be an abundance of news about the presidential race and which party will control the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate.

But what about local school board candidates? Or city council and community college district races? Local elections matter because the decisions these bodies make directly affect residents’ lives, whether in fees, taxes, services or spending priorities.

Yet too many places in California have become news deserts, with little to no independent reporting on what’s going on in local politics, business and arts and entertainment. That makes it harder for residents to find reliable information about how their elected leaders are spending tax dollars, making land-use decisions and planning the future of their community — and harder for them to make informed choices when they vote in local elections.

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This is not just a crisis for news organizations, it’s a threat to the health of communities and democratic institutions. It should be no surprise that researchers have found that fewer candidates run for local office and voter participation declines when news outlets close or reduce the number of reporters covering community affairs.

The Times recently ran a series examining how economic forces and new technology have dramatically reduced local reporting in California, and how that affects the public.

In Richmond, it means the main source of local information has become a news website funded by the largest employer, Chevron, which operates a refinery in the city. It means that Spanish-language local newspapers and magazines, which were once plentiful in Orange County and other cities across the state, have almost disappeared.

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And while there have been online startups, public media and philanthropic- and university-backed news organizations doing important local reporting, those outlets have also struggled in an information ecosystem that is controlled by major tech platforms.

Now lawmakers in Sacramento are trying to help save local news. Among the most promising proposals is the California Journalism Preservation Act, or Assembly Bill 886, which would require that large social media companies and internet search engines, such as Google, share advertising revenue with the journalists and news organizations that produce much of the content on their platforms.

The bill by Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland) was inspired by similar laws passed in Australia and Canada to address shrinking news operations. It’s supported by the California News Publishers Assn. and the News/Media Alliance, of which The Times is a member, because it addresses a basic unfairness.

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Google, Meta and other platforms profit by filling their search engines and social media feeds with facts and snippets of news stories without paying for the content. Not only are they stiffing news outlets, whose reporters, editors and photographers produce those stories, they are siphoning away advertising and collecting revenue on the pilfered pieces. That’s a major reason why so many newspapers, magazines and other news operations have been forced to lay off staff or shut down in the last few years.

Not surprisingly, Google, Meta and tech industry groups oppose the bill. They say requiring platforms to pay for connecting users to content undermines a foundational principle of the open internet. Yes, revenue sharing would be a major change for the tech platforms. But the current model is slowly strangling the content producers, reducing the availability of reliable independent news that is necessary for an informed citizenry and, ultimately, a functioning democracy.

To their credit, state lawmakers recognize what’s at stake and there has been strong, bipartisan support for AB 886, even amid intense lobbying, hardball tactics to cut off California news organizations from search results and a misleading ad campaign funded by tech giants. Legislators are also considering a bill that would tax large tech platforms and use the revenue to give news outlets tax credits for employing full-time journalists.

Over the coming weeks, there’s hope that lawmakers, tech leaders and news publishers can come to some kind of compromise that guarantees ongoing funding for local news operations. It’s not easy to take on some of the most powerful corporations in the world, but legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom have an opportunity to craft a policy that could help save local news and become a model for democracies across the globe.