Is the "Local-News Crisis... Weirdly Easy to Solve"? Maybe not, but if public or philanthropic funding comes though, the public ultimately could save.

I wrote the other day about the loss of the publication Gotham Gazette and yesterday I published a long article on the 962 Pacific rezoning vote at the Sept. 14 Community Board 8 meeting.

What do those two things have in common? Well, had there been any other journalist at the meeting--or even a secondhand report based on a press release--I would've published something sooner. 

But I was waiting to clarify a few things--like how did a Land Use Committee resolution (which I had on tape) change by the time it got to the applicant? Answer: a typo--though whose typo remains unclear.

Had another news outlet published an article, I would've published something sooner, then returned for a follow up. But there's so little budget for journalism that no oiher reporter was there--not even a student reporter covering things for school credit.

Fixing things?

So, I wonder, is The Local-News Crisis Is Weirdly Easy to Solve, as journalsm guru Steven Waldman contended in The Atlantic 8/8/23?

I'm not sure it's that easy, but the argument's worth considering. His lead example:.

[Zak] Podmore, then a staff journalist for the [Salt Lake] Tribune and a corps member of Report for America, a nonprofit I co-founded, published a story revealing that San Juan County, Utah, had paid a single law firm hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying fees. Among other things, Podmore found that the firm had overcharged the county, the poorest in the state, by $109,500. Spurred by his story, the firm paid the money back. Perhaps because it didn’t involve billions of dollars, but rather a more imaginable number, it struck me: In one story, Podmore had retrieved for the county a sum that was triple his annual salary.

So as newspapers close steadily, leaving small communities without coverage, public officials can operate without a check, diminishing democracy. But saving democracy isn't the issue; Waldman thinks public or philanthropic money directed toward sustaining local news would pay for itself.

He cites some examples: government officials enriching themselves at taxpayer expense; reports that prompt government investigations and then private sector fines; and reporting that forces private institutions to operate with more integrity.

Interestingly, even indirect impacts--such as reductions in toxic emissions or lowered government borrowing costs--are associated with news coverage. And there are benefits from such things as watchdogging restaurant inspections or monitoring probation services.

Measurable impacts

That said, it's hardly clear that impacts would be easy to measure in a specific locality on a yearly basis. 

But consider how big the budgets for New York City and New York State are, with enormous opportunities for discretionary spending, perhaps directed to unqualified or politically connected recipients.

How much reporting on, say, campaign finance would drive more fines? What about reporting on uncollected fines? Landlord violations?

Here's one article that might make a difference: the start-up New York Focus, which has found a niche examining oft-ignored state government operations, on 8/16/23 published A Hands-Off Labor Department Retreats From Wage Theft Enforcement.

While the state Department of Labor (DOL) recovered about $36 million a year in wage theft from 2011 to 2019, last year the figure was just $25 million and this year likely will recover just $20 million.

That's a lot of theft that, unlike, say, disturbing viral videos of organized shoplifting does not get captured on camera. But the losses are real, and it's government's job to mitigate them.

New York Focus's Maxwell Parrott interviewed six staffers and former staffers in the DOL, finding the problem as understaffing--25 open positions, with low pay--compounded by poor leadership.

The article suggests that the DOL could do far more than even in its more robust years: "In a 2017 report, the Economic Policy Institute found that minimum wage workers in New York had nearly $1 billion in wages illegally withheld from them each year."

Meanwhile, comparable agencies in some other states operate far more transparently, thus enabling accountability.

Is the solution government funding?

Waldman wrote that the money should come from the feds:

Ideally, investment in local news would come from the federal government, which has more freedom to think long-term than cash-strapped states and municipalities do. The Rebuild Local News coalition, of which I am president, supports legislation that would provide a refundable tax credit for news organizations that employ local reporters, and a tax break for small businesses that advertise in local news. A new version of the bill was just introduced in the House of Representatives by the Republican Claudia Tenney and the Democrat Suzan DelBene. Civic-minded philanthropists focused on high-impact donations should also put money into local news, given the likely societal returns. It’s impossible to quantify exactly how much money would be generated for government and consumers by restoring the health of local news. But it’s nearly as hard to deny that the investment would pay off handsomely. And the saving-democracy part? Well, that’s just gravy.

More on the bill from an Editor & Publisher essay by Waldman:

the bill would provide up to a $5,000 tax credit in the first year and $2,500 in the subsequent four years to a small business that advertises in local news. In effect, it would reimburse 80% of their local ad spend in the first year and 50% after that.

This will directly help the small businesses...

In the case of the payroll tax credit, the benefit is tied to the presence of a local reporter, creating proper incentives for media companies to invest in editorial coverage of their communities. Like the previous one, the new bill would provide up to a $25,000 benefit to news organizations in the first year and $15,000 annually in years two through five. National news organizations are not eligible.

Note that those tax credits would go not solely to hiring journalists, but retaining them--which, in a shrinking journalistic ecosystem may be necessary but also could be seen as subsidizing existing businesses that are already profitable.

Not everyone agrees that government funding is the best idea, given the potential for interference. But media critic Dan Kennedy observed, "Now, tax credits are sufficiently arm’s-length that they don’t present much of a threat to journalistic independence."

Meanwhile, philanthropy

Meanwhile, there's movement on the philanthropic front.

Press Forward Will Award More Than $500 Million to Revitalize Local News, a coalition of 22 donors  announced 9/7/23, "a national initiative to strengthen communities and democracy by supporting local news and information with an infusion of more than a half-billion dollars over the next five years."

Given the loss of local coverage, Press Forward will aim to to offer "greater coordination and peer learning," guided by "prioritizing transformation, centering community needs, growing with equity, ensuring accessibility, and preserving the editorial independence of news gathering organizations."

The goals include strengthening local newsrooms that already have trusts in local communities; scaling infrastructure like legal support to membership programs; supporting newsrooms in "historically underserved communities and economically challenged news deserts;" and investing in "policy ideas that expand access to news and information."

Whatever that all means, it requires journalists doing the work to read documents, attend meetings, and ask questions.

Is it enough?

Then again, the Washington Post opined yesterday, Even $500 million isn’t enough to save local journalism, noting at $100 million yearly divided among "existing digital-only state and local news sites (545, according to Ms. Abernathy’s 2022 paper) and newspapers (6,380) would leave a pittance for each one."

So one goal is to build the infrastructure for sucyh local news. The Post suggests that "[l]ocal philanthropic interests across the country could take a cue from the Press Forward partners and invest in the news organizations down the street."

Well, they have--see The CITY, which does good and sometimes very impactful work, but just isn't big enough to cover close to what's needed.

And in New York

A July 2023 report from the Revson Foundation notes that it has, in the past 12 years, invested $15 million to help build and sustain local journalism in New York:

The Foundation played a formative role in the research, development, and execution of the Advertising Boost Initiative (ABI), which resulted in the enactment of a local law requiring city agencies to spend at least half of their advertising budgets in community media outlets. Since 2020, The City of New York has invested about $48 million in more than 250 nonprofit and for-profit outlets

In other words, there's already some government funding, it's just not enough.