A View From Here
Editor’s Note: A Boston-based group has led the charge on a legislative push to support local news. For the Manchester Cricket and our fellow outlets with a mission to make community news sustainable and vibrant, this is a critical effort.
The Rebuild Local News Coalition, an alliance of local news organizations launched in 2020, has now become an independent nonprofit organization and plans a drive to advance a range of public policies to address the accelerating crisis in local news that threatens so many communities.
The Coalition will research, develop and champion public policies at the state, local and national levels — including payroll tax credits to hire and retain local reporters, proposals to target government advertising spending toward local news instead of social media, and reducing the influence of hedge funds on local newspapers.
The organization is funded by a combination of support from journalism organizations and leading philanthropic organizations. Philanthropic and private sector supporters include: the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Microsoft, the Yellow Chair Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Charles H. Revson Foundation, the Argosy Foundation, and the Posner Foundation. Previous support has come from Democracy Fund.
Steven Waldman, who as president of Report for America created the Coalition, will become the full-time president of the organization. The Coalition was incubated in Boston at the GroundTruth Project, home of Report for America, and has already pulled together a broad-based coalition including publishers and labor unions, rural weeklies, nonprofits newsrooms, state press associations and civic organizations.
Together, they represent more than 3,000 local newsrooms.
The Rebuild Local News Coalition first rose to prominence in 2021 on the strength of its drive to pass the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. One portion of that, a payroll tax credit for newsrooms to hire or retain local reporters, passed the U.S. House of Representatives and almost passed in the Senate. It would have been the largest government effort to support local news since the Post Office Act of 1792.
“The collapse of local news poses a massive crisis for American communities, and democracy,” said Waldman. “Part of the solution is smart, nonpartisan public policy that carefully preserves editorial independence. We have had this at other points in American history, and we must again.”
More than 1,800 communities have no local news, and thousands more have “ghost newspapers” that barely cover the communities. The number of newspaper newsroom employees has dropped 57 percent since 2004. Numerous studies have shown that the contraction of local reporting threatens democracy, leading to less civic involvement and lower voting rates, increased corruption and abuses of power, higher borrowing costs and more polarized communities.
Financial support has come from stakeholders, foundations and the private sector.
“The crisis facing local news is not just a problem for publishers and journalists, but a problem for democracy itself,” said Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft. “By developing and advocating for policies that support local news, the Rebuild Local News Coalition can help preserve a healthy, diverse, and free press that informs and engages citizens.”
In addition to the tax credit for hiring local reporters, the Coalition supports tax credits for small businesses that advertise with local news, tax credits for consumers to subscribe or donate to local news, having government target some of its advertising spending toward local news instead of social media, helping community groups or local businesses acquire newspapers from chains, changing banking rules to help small media businesses that serve low and moderate income communities, antitrust policies that discourage hedge fund ownership of newspapers, and fellowships for journalists to serve in local newsrooms.
