BONUS: New legislation hopes to stop erosion of newspaper jobs
Kennedy, Woerner worked to protect community journalism with new program
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Editor's Note: With the passage of the new state budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law "The Newspaper and Broadcast Media Jobs Program" to protect community journalism throughout the state. Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association, was one of many who worked behind the scenes to get this legislation passed. Here are her thoughts of the important of local news on our communities and this specific legislation.
By Diane Kennedy
President, New York News Publishers Association
Communities without a local newspaper experience higher government spending, lower voter participation and higher levels of civic mistrust. Since 2004, more than 2,000 newspapers throughout the country have closed and more than half of all journalism jobs have disappeared. This dangerous trend is expected to continue and accelerate, except in New York State, where Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a new law on April 20 that will provide a lifeline to local news in the form of a refundable payroll tax credit to retain and grow the ranks of journalists.
The Newspaper and Broadcast Media Jobs Program, drawn from legislation sponsored by Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Assemblywoman Carrie Woerner, will temporarily offset some of the catastrophic loss of newspaper income to online platforms that control nearly all digital advertising.
In the past, a newspaper would derive nearly 85 percent of its income from print advertising. Thanks largely to the internet, that revenue has dropped 71 percent since 2000. Digital advertising and subscriptions generate a fraction of that lost income. At the same time that revenue has declined, the cost of newsprint has skyrocketed, increasing by more than 25 percent since 2017.
The new law, which takes effect in January 2025 and expires in January 2028, is designed to buy time for newspapers to develop a sustainable source of revenue. It funds half of the first $50,000 of a journalist’s salary, with a maximum of $300,000 per newsroom per year for three years. One component of the legislation sets aside $4 million to help fund the hiring of additional journalists. The budget protects New York taxpayers by imposing an annual cap of $30 million statewide.
In the course of securing legislative support for this program, we discovered that the erosion of local news was news itself to many people. Although Assemblywoman Woerner and Sen. Hoylman-Sigal proactively contacted us three years ago to ask what they could do to save journalism jobs, we realized we should educate as many elected officials as possible. Most were instantly supportive.
Working with the Albany Newspaper Guild, the union that represents newspaper journalists in the Capital District, we met with dozens of legislators and their staffs to explain the dire situation and enlist their support, which resulted in more than 70 state legislators signing on as co-sponsors. The Communications Workers of America and the AFL-CIO joined the effort and their partnership led to enactment of this legislation.
Together with our allies in labor, we shared the findings of studies on the impact of the loss of local news. Research demonstrates that a decline in local journalism leads to a decline in civic engagement, public health and safety, cost of government borrowing, a rise in extreme partisanship and mistrust, a risk to the survival of small local businesses and community organizations.
A study reported by the Pew Research Center in 2020 found that Americans who mainly get their news on social media were less likely to get the facts right about the coronavirus and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims. Research shows that the existence of a local newspaper is directly correlated with lower costs of municipal financing (2018 Hutchins Center working paper), with higher civic engagement (Journal of Politics, 2017) and a lower level of extreme partisanship (Journal of Communication, 2018).
Data regarding local news in New York State is detailed in New York - The Expanding News Desert (usnewsdeserts.com). New York has one county without any newspaper (Orleans County) and 13 counties with only one newspaper. Although only three daily newspapers in New York State have closed since 2004, a significant number of weekly newspapers have shut down. A number of both daily and weekly newspapers have merged. As a result, between 2004 and 2019, the total number of daily newspapers declined from 62 to 54, and the number of weekly newspapers declined from 439 to 249.
One of New York’s strengths – its array of large and small cities, rural farming communities, suburban neighborhoods and small towns - is mirrored in its newspapers. New York is home to newspapers whose reach spans the globe, newspapers whose coverage stretches across the wilderness of the Adirondack Park, newspapers focused on a single neighborhood in New York City, and newspapers that cover small cities and their suburbs. Many of them cover school board meetings, the impact of weather events, stories about interesting local people, business openings and closings and the work of the criminal justice system. Each of these newspapers employs journalists focused on covering news for local residents.
This is a jobs bill, and it supports jobs that are vital to democracy. Newspapers of all types, serving readers with varied interests across a wide range of communities, are equally deserving of survival. The lead of this story is that New York State will save journalism jobs and help to foster employment of additional journalists.
We are optimistic that this program will return benefits to New Yorkers, some of which we will be able to calculate, and some we cannot. According to the Economic Policy Institute, newspaper jobs have a multiplier effect, with every 100 journalism jobs supporting 268 other jobs in the community.
Local news is a public good. Journalism at its best holds a mirror up to the community, for better or worse, and its holds powerful people accountable. That service benefits everyone in the community. This was true at the dawn of our country and it remains true today. New York has always been a state that values and reads its news and this legislation will foster that continued appreciation.
Diane Kennedy is the long-time president of the New York News Publishers Association which regularly lobbies on issues that benefit journalism and local newspapers.
Some people seem concerned that news could be sponsored (that is, paid for) by sources other than the reader. Sources like public money, or the taxpayer, or the government. And, presumably, that the source of revenue would affect the objectivity of the reporting.
I'd just like to point out that news traditionally has always been paid for largely by sources other than the reader. In years past, newspapers derived the bulk of their revenue from advertisers — that is, local and national businesses. Even today, while advertising revenue has decreased, it still provides about half of newspapers' revenue.
I find it interesting that public money used to fund news outlets is a concern among some, but there's no concern about business sponsorship.
(What would Fox News be without the My Pillow guy and testosterone supplement funding? I mean, what can go wrong when the My Pillow guy is funding your news through advertising?)
I am pleased with this bill, and I wish there could be a national version. Corporate welfare? Well, yes, in a sense, but I would rather my tax dollars go to local journalism than oil companies and factory farms, for example. Ideally, we pay taxes so our elected officials can use them to do public good, and the founding fathers thought so highly of a free press that they enshrined the right to have it in the Constitution. I would like to know what guard rails there are to keep the press truly free even though they are getting these tax breaks, because what politicians give, they can take away. And newspapers will probably never make enough money to buy a congressman the way other industries do.