rolls of printing paper
The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the challenges facing local news outlets.
Would getting a tax credit in exchange for a donation to a local media organization motivate readers to support local journalism? Similarly, would businesses see tax credits as an incentive to support local news outlets with advertising or sponsorships?
The supporters of the Local Journalism Sustainability Act, now pending in Congress, certainly hope so. A bill was first introduced into the House of Representatives a couple of years ago, but this year’s version — there is actually a Senate and House bill with some differences — has surprising traction due to support from a few key lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, who co-authored the Senate bill. Steve Waldman, president and co-founder of Report for America, sums up the bill’s fortunes this way: “The headline would be that this thing has gone from about 1 percent chance of becoming law to about 50 percent.”
Backers of the legislation hope it will be folded into the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, so its future will be determined soon. “This is going to happen or not happen in the next two to three weeks,” says Waldman, who is also at the helm of Rebuild Local News, a coalition of news organizations leading the effort to pass the Local Journalism Sustainability Act. “It’s right on the edge,” he adds. “It has a lot of support but there are a lot of other things people want to get into the reconciliation bill.”
The bill aims to provide much-needed funding to local news outlets that were struggling before the COVID-19 pandemic, and face even bigger challenges now. “The business models for local news have collapsed and that’s created this huge crisis for democracy,” says Waldman. “People are not getting the information they need. The vacuums created by the loss of local news are now filled with misinformation and conspiracy theories. There is less accountability for institutions. There’s more waste, more corruption, lower voter turnout, more alienation. So it’s a real catastrophe.”
The bills would create three new tax credits to support local journalism:
• A five-year credit of up to $250 annually for subscriptions or donations to a local news outlet
• A five-year credit of up to $25,000 per journalist in the first year and up to $15,000 in subsequent years for news outlets to help retain and hire more journalists
• A five-year credit up to $5,000 in the first year and up to $2,500 in subsequent years for spending by advertisers in a local news outlet
While there is no shortage of lawmakers who demonize the media, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act has surprising bipartisan support, says Waldman. “Everyone makes a distinction between national and local news, including Republicans,” he says. “It’s just a different thing. People trust local news of various sorts in a way that they don’t with national news. It’s not as polarized. Everyone seems to make that distinction including Republicans who normally would be anti-media.”
Waldman says the structure of the bill should also appeal to Democrats and Republicans alike.
“Progressives like the fact that it is putting serious money in a bottom-up way into the local news system. Republicans ought to like that it is not a government agency… giving out grants to local news organizations.”
In fact, there’s a bit of a market test built into the legislation. “A news organization is only going to get the subscription or the donation or the ad credit if people actually like what they’re doing,” says Waldman. “It’s amplifying the buying power of consumers but you still have to convince the consumer that you’re worth paying attention to.”
So far, Wisconsin lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have not rushed to co-sponsor the bills or pledge their support.
Tom Tiffany co-sponsored the House bill last time around, but is not listed as a co-sponsor of the current legislation. Isthmus emailed his office to determine whether the northern Wisconsin Republican congressman was supporting the current version, but did not receive a response. The offices of Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan of Black Earth also didn’t respond to emails.
Only Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s office responded, saying that the “senator is still reviewing this item and has not yet made a decision.”
The Wisconsin Newspaper Association, which represents 192 members, including 30 daily newspapers and 162 weeklies, supports the legislation, says Beth Bennett, the group’s executive director. She says when the pandemic hit, there were lots of discussions around what could be done by members of Congress to help journalism. “We were classified as essential workers, and a lot of members of Congress saw what was happening in their communities as small, community newspapers were going away.”
Bennett says the national legislation provided inspiration for an advertising tax credit her organization plans to introduce at the state level. But, she adds, “I am waiting to see if the JSA has any legs before doing a state-specific bill.”
Waldman says two of the major sticking points in the measures are whether broadcasters will be included — they are only in the Senate version — and the definition of a news outlet. The latter issue is particularly thorny. “For First Amendment reasons, you don’t want a lot of subjectivity so that someone in the government has to be making all sorts of subjective judgments about what counts as a news organization.”
While there are still skeptics who see government-funded media as a danger to editorial independence and a free society, the Local Journalism Sustainability Act makes a counter-argument. “Some local journalism should be seen as a public good and supported in the same way we do schools and public libraries,” says Waldman. “Not only is there a need, but an obligation for the government to help subsidize civically important local news and journalism.”
