Congress is taking some encouraging steps toward the critical challenge of saving America’s local newspapers.
This was apparent in several proposals this week. A new House stimulus proposal would extend paycheck protection loans to additional local news outlets. A bipartisan group of senators, with outstanding leadership by Washington Sen. Maria Cantwell, introduced a standalone Senate bill offering similar loan support.
These proposals reflect growing appreciation in Congress of the crisis facing America’s free press and the need to sustain it through and beyond the current health and economic crises.
“I think the issue has hit the tipping point,” Cantwell told this editorial board. “There’s always a point where an issue finally breaks through to a high level, and I think obviously COVID has definitely brought it home in a real sense — we need critical information about the crisis, yet newspapers and the media are also impacted by huge losses.”
Emergency support is critical for journalists and many others. Congress should simultaneously enact policies to prevent mass extinction of local newspapers.
Before the year ends, Congress should create a “superfund” to sustain local newspapers. This could be done by imposing a small fee on the ad revenue of major online platforms like Google and Facebook.
Other democracies that depend on a free press are taking similar steps. Australia is using antitrust law, and France is using copyright protection rules to force Google and Facebook to compensate publishers for news stories and articles they use.
This is not punishing success but rightly seeking compensation for content that online giants transmit and profit from. Google alone made $4.7 billion off of news stories it displayed via search and Google News in 2018, according to a study by the News Media Alliance.
Also needed are reforms to media-ownership rules, to sustain a diversity of news organizations doing original reporting and accountability journalism. Most significant reporting that communities need emanates from local newspapers, many of which are now facing extinction. The proliferation of websites displaying news stories is not a replacement.
The combination of sustained federal support and stronger ownership regulations would incentivize more philanthropists and local investors to sustain and revive local newspapers. That’s been a success in cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles. But more is needed to help thousands of communities that have lost their newspaper or now have ghost papers, with negligible reporting, milked by absentee ownership groups.
This editorial first appeared in The Seattle Times on Friday. This commentary should be considered another point of view and not necessarily the opinion or editorial policy of The Dominion Post.
