| Friend,
Big news out of the California state Senate! Yesterday, the chamber passed SB 1327 with supermajority support, making a historic investment in the future of local news for communities like yours. This bill would impose a fee on major tech platforms to generate an estimated $500 million for news outlets.
We’re immensely grateful to Sen. Steve Glazer and the bill’s other sponsors who’ve carried this important legislation this far. SB 1327's passage in the state Senate is a testament to the tireless efforts led by local journalists, community publishers, public-interest groups, labor unions and grassroots advocates in California.
Free Press Action has long supported taxing advertising to help subsidize the production of local journalism and civic information1. SB 1327 would spur the hiring and retention of journalists at a time when newsroom job losses are reaching crisis levels.2 It would also help fund UC Berkeley’s California Local News Fellowship, a publicly funded program created with Free Press Action’s support that places journalists in underserved areas.
Now that the legislation has gained much-needed momentum, Free Press Action is calling on lawmakers to amend SB 1327 so that it can best serve California residents and effectively support local news. Because the bill doesn’t currently limit which companies are eligible, the lion’s share of funding from the fee would go to large and out-of-state commercial media giants like ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and Sinclair … leaving less for the small publishers, ethnic media and community-rooted outlets that are most in need of support.
Free Press Action will keep working to amend the bill so that it benefits outlets that truly care about communities.
Thank you so much for your help,
Alex and the rest of the Free Press Action team
freepress.net
P.S. Can we count on you to sustain our efforts as we urge legislators to make the necessary amendments to this bill?
1. Beyond Fixing Facebook, Free Press Action, February 2019
2. “The Expanding News Desert,” UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, 2024  |
