Congress: Don’t miss the mark on saving the future of local news

Congress: Don’t miss the mark on saving the future of local news

By Sue Cross, Executive Director & CEO, INN

Congress needs to fix loopholes in a news protection act moving toward a vote if it hopes to meet its aims of preserving local journalism.

The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, JCPA, aims to fundamentally shift the relationship between U.S. news companies and digital platforms by forcing platforms to negotiate payment for the news they use in search and social media. Meta has threatened to pull all news off of Facebook if this advances.

In recent versions, the measure is missing major pieces critical to its aims:

First and foremost, it must include nonprofit newsrooms. The current bill excludes 501(c)3 news organizations. That’s just nuts. They’re the future of local news for millions of people.

They’re often the only news sources left or being launched in hundreds of communities where newspapers and commercial broadcasters have closed their local news desks. They’re also the fastest growing part of the field and the wing of journalism most deeply invested in coverage of our civic life.

Independent nonprofit newsrooms now have more than 3,000 journalists on the job. That’s nearly as many as — and possibly more than — the nation’s largest newspaper groups, given round after round of devastating cuts at newspapers. They’re also helping those newspapers. As the nation’s largest shared reporting source, the more than 400 nonprofit newsrooms in the INN Network provide more than 400,000 stories a year to other media — 7,100 other publishers — as well as directly to the public. Mostly free, with few paywalls.

And this solution to the local news shortage is expanding. Nonprofit newsrooms are growing by more than 20% a year across the country. The biggest gains are in local news. Their deep dedication to community is building broad public support. And the nonprofits are governed not by profit requirements, but by boards legally charged with making sure they’re meeting public need. Altogether, nonprofit newsrooms are the most stable, sustainable news sources out there.

Nonprofits that are part of the INN Network — members of the Institute for Nonprofit News — also commit to minimizing anonymous funding and otherwise steer clear of dark money. They’re far more transparent than most commercial companies can be. It’s exactly the kind of journalism the JCPA should be supporting.

The measure also needs to address a few other core principles of good journalism.

• Transparency. A similar measure in Australia has restored a great deal of public service reporting but is flawed by secrecy. If the U.S. is going to push digital platforms to a negotiating table, by law, the media companies and the platforms should disclose the payments that result. A recent version of the measure gives a technical nod to transparency but undermines it in the same breath. All media companies involved in this measure need to be pushing for sunshine, whatever the results.
• Put the money where it matters: journalism. This isn’t about propping up shareholder profits or adding to the take that hedge-fund newspaper owners extract from communities where they’ve bought up newspapers. The current wording does little to prevent such windfalls. That could hurt more than help the public access to news. There’s a requirement in recent drafts that to qualify, news media would need to ensure that just 25% of their editorial content is “information about topics of current local, national or international public interest.” That’s absurdly low. Clickbait farms could qualify, but the nonprofits that invest every penny in serious investigations and watchdog reporting would be left out? Public interest journalism often is part of a broader mix, but at minimum, it should be the majority of content if this act is actually about preserving journalism. (The bill also appears to exclude public media. Also nuts.)
• Similarly, news companies that take part need to be accountable for spending this money on journalism and journalists. Otherwise there’s no point. As the drafts read early this week, there was a soft incentive basing payouts partly on the journalism share of total budgets. But there’s no requirement to actually spend digital platform payments on news production or journalism jobs. Those should be table stakes. And it’s simple: News companies seeking dollars in the name of public interest should be accountable for spending the money in the public interest.
• Cut the cartel aspects. The bill’s written so a club of current players gets to vote in or out any future public interest media. Participation should be defined so the small and growing parts of the news field can be at the table. This includes independent media of all types, nonprofits, key community media including the traditional Black press, as well as news startups all over the country. There will be many more forming. They should know the qualifications required to join and be able to take part if they meet them, without relying on a cartel’s vote.

As it stands now, these egregious loopholes must be closed so this measure stands a chance of supporting local news in a meaningful way.

And it’s also worth noting: Congress has another way, right at hand, that could help local news a lot. It’s a payroll tax credit for journalism jobs. It will keep local reporters and editors working across the country. It maintains independence for journalists while targeting a tax credit where it can make the most difference: supporting local reporters, covering their communities. It deserves another look.