{"id":73735,"date":"2025-06-25T15:21:16","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T22:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=73735"},"modified":"2025-06-25T15:21:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T22:21:16","slug":"15-million-lifeline-would-give-californias-local-news-a-fighting-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=73735","title":{"rendered":"$15 Million Lifeline Would Give California\u2019s Local News a Fighting Chance"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Julian Do<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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One-third of California\u2019s newsrooms have fully shut since 2005. As trust in national media crumbles, a modest proposal could determine whether the rest survive.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The State Capitol in Sacramento, where a $15 million lifeline to fund local news statewide hangs in the balance. (Image via Canva)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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One-third of California\u2019s newsrooms have fully shut since 2005. As trust in national media crumbles, a modest proposal could determine whether the rest survive.<\/p>\n

That includes hundreds of multicultural community news outlets \u2014 once called ethnic media before the Trump administration made \u201cethnic\u201d a trigger word \u2014 with which my nonprofit organization has worked for decades to meet the information needs of immigrants and communities of color.<\/p>\n

Amid an ever-polarized country, the need to access accurate information fast has never been more urgent.<\/p>\n

Nationwide, newsroom employment dropped 65% between 2005 and 2020, and the U.S. has lost over 2,500 newspapers since 2005.<\/p>\n

Over the same period, our community news sector incurred a loss of over 50%, down to about 250 outlets in California today, many of which are their communities\u2019 only surviving newsrooms with the impossible responsibility of covering the entire state.<\/p>\n

Our organization American Community Media (ACoM) \u2014 with the California Local News Fellowship, the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, California Black Media, and Latino Media Collaborative \u2014 joins the California Propel Local News Initiative with advisory from former Senator Steven Glazer to solve this worsening crisis by rebuilding California\u2019s shrinking local news infrastructure with a $15 million annual allocation for the 2025-2026 state budget, now pending approval by Governor Gavin Newsom.<\/p>\n

The ask is less than 0.005% of the overall $320 billion state budget, equal to spending half a penny to protect a $100 bill.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, voters\u2019 return on investment is immediate: The measure would prevent the closure of already-struggling newsrooms serving news deserts, ensuring that Californians don\u2019t lose access to vital, accurate local information, including public service cuts and urgent civil rights issues.<\/p>\n

Participating newsrooms would serve as catalysts to fact-based, grassroots reporting industry-wide, meeting the public\u2019s demand for the news they want on the digital platforms they prefer.<\/p>\n

Consider these figures: While public trust in national media has plummeted to\u00a032% in 2023<\/a>, trust in local news organizations has surged to\u00a074% in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

From 2013 to 2025,\u00a0U.S. media trends<\/a>\u00a0also show a growing reliance on social media platforms, which 54% of adults now use for news and information \u2014 surpassing traditional TV (50%) and online news websites and apps (48%).<\/p>\n

As this preference for social media grows, so does the prevalence of paid-per-click misinformation on these platforms. The failure of California\u2019s underfunded news infrastructure to provide its nearly 40 million residents with accurate information from sources and channels they trust would only further jeopardize our democratic system.<\/p>\n

To prevent this, CPLNI proposes a two-pronged strategy.<\/p>\n

The measure would support the UC Berkeley-based California Local News Fellowship which, since its launch in 2023, has already placed 75 trained mid-career journalism fellows in highly trusted newsrooms, including ACoM and other multicultural media outlets, statewide to bridge growing gaps in local news coverage.<\/p>\n

The CPLNI would also fund the California Propel Initiative, which equips local nonprofit, for-profit and ethnic or community newsrooms \u2014 especially those with the widest underserved audiences \u2014 with the skills, tools, and resources to deliver factual, engaging information on widely used social media and online platforms.<\/p>\n

In late May, both state Senate and Assembly hearings brought dozens of California\u2019s top news champions to Sacramento to testify for and support the CPLNI, including former Los Angeles Times and Associated Press journalist Sen. Catherine Blakespear, D-Encinitas, and media transparency advocate Assemblymember Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park.<\/p>\n

ACoM and our many media partners also drove hundreds of miles to give our own testimonies and join a letter campaign to legislators.<\/p>\n

As any community leader or elected official knows, responding to a crisis when survival is at stake is nearly or actually impossible without an injection of vital resources; in this case the ask is miniscule, while the benefits would help give Californians the news they need for generations.<\/p>\n

For these reasons, I\u2019m writing on behalf of the over 300 California community media outlets we work with to urge California legislators to continue supporting the California Propel Local News Initiative, including the California Local News Fellowship Program at UC Berkeley.<\/p>\n

We also urge Governor Newsom to approve the $15 million request for the 2025-2026 California Budget, as less than a week remains before his approval deadline.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByJulian Do Jun 25, 2025 One-third...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73736,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73735\/revisions\/73736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}