If local journalism will be bolstered via payroll tax credits, under consideration in Congress, shouldn't hiring journalists be incentivized over retaining them?

Yesterday I noted some of the debate about financing local journalism.

A 6/27/23 Nieman Lab article, If the U.S. wants to boost journalism, it should learn from Canada’s mistakes, analyzes a report from the University of North Carolina’s Center on Technology Policy on Canada's tax credits for news publishers and individuals.

From Sarah Scire's article:

“At the federal level, lawmakers have framed news tax credits as key to protecting democracy through a healthy press,” the report notes. “This is a worthy goal, but given widespread partisan mistrust of the press it is unlikely to be broadly appealing across party lines. A potentially stronger framing would be to cast the credits as a benefit for small business owners and the broader community.”

Indeed, that seems to be the framing of the current bill in Congress.

I'll note a couple of recommendations in the report:

Impose transparency measures to allow for public accountability. 

That seems a no-brainer. Who's getting the tax credits? How much more journalism has been produced?

Experiment with different tiers of credits for employee retention and growth. 

This strikes me as worthy: rather than provide the same payroll tax credit for retaining employees and hiring them, offer more for new hires. Otherwise, some companies that got into journalism for the profit margin might get rewarded for not producing more.

What's pending

According to Rebuild Local News, the Community News and Small Business Support Act (H.R. 4756) would offer:

• small businesses (50 or fewer employees) get a tax credit of up to $5,000 in the first year of the bill and $2,500 in the next 4 years to advertise in a local news organizations, covering 80% of its ad spending in the first year, and 50% in years 2-5.
• local newspapers or publications payroll tax credits up to $25,000 per local journalist in the first year and up to $15,000 in the following four years, covering 50% of newsroom employee compensation, up to $50,000, in the first year and 30% of compensation, up to $50,000, in the subsequent four years.

However, the latter provision, does not yet (bill text here) make a distinction between hiring and retention.